@Literary Mama

Read the most recent pieces at Literary Mama…

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COLUMNS

Help Wanted: Working Mom. Apply Within. by Marjorie Osterhout from Dear Marjo
Dear Marjo- I’ve been home with my kids since they were babies. They’re older now and I’d like to go back to work, but I feel like Rumpelstiltskin…

Dangerous Cooking for Boys by Katherine J. Barrett from Of This Fantastic Peach
It seems catching a fish (or mesmerizing a chicken) is daring and dangerous, but seasoning, grilling and serving it for dinner is not.

Help by Avery Fischer Udagawa from Four Worlds
I use my laptop to check the word suspend, i.e., suspended in space or a suspended judgment. The word suspend signifies deferment or delay, or the state of staying aloft, like collagen in a salt solution.

Common Ground by Ona Gritz from Doing it Differently
A few years later I found myself sliding into a seat in a crowded movie theater to watch a feature-length version of what was essentially an infomercial for Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Ah, love. Sometimes it means putting aside something you’d love to do on a given afternoon to sit through something so dull you could weep.

Rich Mom. Poor Mom by Marjorie Osterhout from Dear Marjo
What we didn’t plan for was my husband losing his job. It wasn’t his fault—he was laid off—but it’s still surprising and also kind of embarrassing. 

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Keep, Donate, Discard by Liz Matthews
She walked out of the room, and you really wanted to throw away the drawing of daddy. But could you have? Should you have? There had been at least five other drawings of daddy in recent memory and she had never asked to see them again. You do have a folder designated for this kind of stuff, but it makes you feel claustrophobic just thinking about adding more to it. 

Navigating Widowhood; My Mother Finds Her Way by Susan Moldaw
Since my father died my mother likes to say, “‘Widow’ is a harsh word.” I often reply, “Not necessarily. That’s the meaning you bring to it,” but that nuance doesn’t interest her.  She wasn’t prepared to be a widow.

She Was Here by Jennifer Richler
I wish I could say that when I think of my mother, I remember her as she was in life, I “celebrate the person she was,” as all the sympathy cards instructed me to do. But the truth is, when I think about my mom, much of the time, I think not about her life, but about her death. 

The Stranded Bird of Pavia by Lauretta Zucchetti
“Mamma,” I called out one night.  I was puckered into a ball, trying to find warmth, trying to make myself small enough so that my wrists became my ankles, my feet became my hands. 

FICTION

After Europe by Jodi Paloni
She had changed. Her darling girl carried a lift in her shoulders, a stance she’d mastered overseas, without Margaret’s reminders. It was a posture a mother wished for in a daughter, yet hoped could be achieved by her influence. 

LITERARY REFLECTIONS

The Mother as She Writes by Andrea Lani
When people ask me what I write about, I brush them off with a self-deprecating, “Just stories about mothers.”

Writing Prompt: The Mother As She Writes by Andrea Lani by Libby Maxey
In this month’s Literary Reflection’s essay, Andrea Lani identifies some of the challenges of writing about motherhood while mothering. 

Essential Reading: Mother’s Day by Libby Maxey
Celebrating Mother’s Day at Literary Mama means celebrating all the mothers that literature has to offer—the good, the bad, the relatable, the hard-bitten, the struggling, the comical, the fearful, the mildly crazy, and every other kind, too. 

Now Reading: May 2014 by Libby Maxey

POETRY

The Best Things Come from Little Rock, AR by Eve Lyons

Sixth Day by Liz Abrams-Morley

Normalize by Emily Dagostino

Zuihitsu for My Mother After Becoming a Mother by Jenny Yang Cropp

Hazel’s Birth by Emily Wall

REVIEWS

Capturing Impermanence: A Review of Wendy Wizner’s Morph and Bloom by Katherine D. Stutzman
In Morph and Bloom, Wendy Wisner (author of Epicenter and the chapbook Another Place of Rocking) presents poems that capture fleeting moments, strung like beads on a line that runs between childhood and motherhood.

The Slow Dance of Medbh McGuckian: A Review of The High Caul Cap by Lois Marie Harrod
hen reading the poems of Medbh McGuckian, remember what Jean Paul Sartre wrote in his essay “Why Write?”: “The creative act . . . is the conjoint effort of author and reader. . . . You are perfectly free to leave that book on the table. But if you open it, you assume responsibility for it.