Carol Moldaw: Road Trip to Planned Parenthood
Only one hazmat-suited
protester outside the two-block buffer zone
shouldered a sign stapled to a plywood cross
that proclaimed a woman’s regret inevitable.
Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone
I will not walk away.
The moment the nurse
pressed your splotched
body into my arms,
your needs fixed my fate.
Barbara Edelman: White-Throated Sparrow
Though she is dead
she is buying me a car
and this buying makes her happy
Beth Brown Preston: Still Life with Flowers
Momma cautioned me about the dangers of an artist’s life
when in sixth grade I revealed that I wanted to write poetry.
I painted my first canvas as a high school senior:
“The Breast” — an enormous painting of my bronze right teat.
Christine Fair: Triptych
If she had a girl, she wanted her to be pretty-popular-slender-cheerleader.
She got me.
She named me Carol.
Julie Poole: The Underground Economy of Unpaid Care
More than 40 million people provide unpaid care for adults. My mother was one of them.
Video: Long Line of Ladies
This film intimately observes the months-long process of one girl, her family, and their tight-knit Karuk community as they come together to prepare for her Ihuk, the coming-of-age ceremony for girls.
Elizabeth Gargano: Why We Should Try Talking to the Dead
After my father’s death, my mother kept talking to him.
Elizabeth Kirschner: Time and Again
As the fire taught the house how to surrender, the dolls, they screamed, not me, oh they screamed like ashes that smelled of church pews.
Jennifer Harman: When parents turn children into weapons, everybody loses
Domestic abuse can involve one parent using a child as a weapon against the other parent, which harms the child in immense ways. My research has identified how these dynamics play out and examines the damage.
Dawn Potter: About Mothers
How can I judge the worth of a brooding life?
In a busy restaurant my giant son leans his head on my shoulder,
and I am his mother again, lifting his memory into my arms.
Elizabeth Gaskell: On Visiting the Grave of My Stillborn Little Girl
I think of thee in these far happier days
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Wendy Mnookin: In the Small Rotary
where Route 100 meets School Street,
two cows graze.
