by Nick Sweet
Later, in bed at his place, we were just starting to get it on, when Winston pulled away and said, “I’d like to talk a bit first, if it’s all right with you.” I was really in love with Winston, and still at that stage where I would look at him from time to time and think, God, he’s mine, and marvel at my good fortune. His cheekbones were high and broad, and beautifully sculptured, and there was a calm intelligence, and pride, in those brown eyes of his that I just adored. Right now, though, he seemed distracted, preoccupied.
Published Tuesday, September 8, 2009.
A Poem for my Son on his Due Date
by Robin Silbergleid
i.
A boy empties a white pail
into flames on my television
and my hand holds that place
it never left. I watch and wonder
what happened to my son
when the doctor wrenched him
from my body too small
Published Tuesday, September 1, 2009
by K. Perks
They line the shelves.
Tall, small, fat, and furry
Published Monday, August 24, 2009
An Interview on Breastfeeding and Wet Nursing with author Erica Eisdorfer
interview by Jessica Powers
by Alison Mandaville
The tug was
like teeth.
Published August 5, 2009.
There is a new girl sitting in the circle, and Marcy takes some kind of perverse delight in seeing if she can scare them off or get them to cry on the first day. The counselor never arrives earlier than fifteen minutes late, which means Marcy has ten minutes. She could almost run off the veterans, so a rookie hardly stands a chance. Marcy takes one glance at the new chick, which means she sees everything it would take a normal person several moments to absorb. The new chick is some kind of walking advertisement for Gucci and Armani and smells like real Giorgio, not that imitation stuff in the yellow bottles from Wal-Mart. The thing that will set Marcy off will be the new chick’s nails. They are perfectly manicured and they’re real. They aren’t thick enough to be acrylic. Marcy is a nail biter. Sometimes when everyone else is bawling or screaming the counselor will get this look on her face like she wants to tear her hair out. Marcy is never part of the fray. But once in a while she will be biting her nails, and sometimes it will be so bad she can’t get them to stop bleeding.
”Did you guys hear about the kid in South Carolina?”
One thing the group knows about Marcy is that resistance is futile. They will be assimilated. Nora looks at Marcy. “What happened?”
Published on July 27, 2009.
by Kelsey Rae O’Callahan
When I held you, your face
red and your hair matted,
small curled up body slick
with the effort of being born;
you screwed up your face and cried,
softly, your voice quieter
than I had expected, your expectations
lower than I had hoped. You gave up….
Published on July 20, 2009.
“The Adopted Daughter At Last Comes Home”
by Chris Weygandt Alba
She arrives on a jet from Wichita.
She throws her baggage in a heap
and lights a cigarette. She waits.
Published Monday, July 13, 2009.
by Adrienne Ross
The scar is almost gone. Softened, pink, once a crimson line atop my pubic hair, much of it has slipped under my skin. It was through this opening that a murky mass seen in sonogram tests was revealed as endometriosis. I was 38, and believed myself healthy until a routine examination led weeks later to surgery. What was cut away was the shreds of my left ovary and fallopian tube. What remained was a desire to have a child that expanded into its own fullness as my chances of becoming a mother dissipated. More here…
Published Monday, July 6, 2009.
by Karen Carr
They had wheeled her in here hours ago-hours ago, when she had told them it was time. They had wheeled her into this green tiled room, pushed her into the cold metal stirrups, pushed her legs apart, pushed their fingers up into her, and decided that it was not time to stop that pushing. Now, in the same room, they stood above her, all wearing green tile-matching masks, muttering in voices that seemed to her like voices on a long distance phone line. They stood around her in a semicircle, her body underneath their eyes, laid out flat-sacrificial. She saw the man who she recognized by his glasses and the red, broken-blood-vesselled nose. He smiled through his mask and put his hand on her shoulder.
Published on June 24th, 2009.
by Jennifer Schalliol
Noah’s cousin
dies - pre-cousin -
Published June 8, 2009.
By AJ Pearson-VanderBroek
“Why do you insist on touching me there?”
“It’s only your scar.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
Published Monday, May 25, 2009
a poem by Hanna Miller
Sheets warm and ragged.
Floated in a film,
hung on by a thread.
Lying in bed as sweat
Published May 11, 2009
“Novelties,” “After the Birth,” “Cause,” and “Gratitude”
Poems by Jenn Blair
Novelties
And that’s the way of it.
The farmer wouldn’t look his daughter in the face
and when she lay on the cold yellow tile
writhing in her own blood and pain
the thing formed and still
Published April 27, 2009
excerpt from a novel
by Susan Oloier
As I mill around the maternity section of Target, pushing the camel-colored pregnancy pants with the stretch bellies across the rack, I am oblivious to Life’s samurai surprises. At three months—twelve weeks in pregnancy lingo—my size 28 Levi’s are just beginning to tighten. But as an overzealous, first-time mom-to-be, I need to explore my clothing options.
Published April 13, 2009
by Johnny Townsend
What the hell was this? Jeff stared at the phone in his hand. Had the Church found out what he’d done? Was he about to get in trouble? He’d been disfellowshipped once back 18 years ago for having sex with his girlfriend, which was one of the main reasons for getting away from Houston. And he’d been disfellowshipped here in Dallas a year later for having sex with his fiancee in this city before they married.
He’d tried to be good after their divorce and was really working hard to resist his new girlfriend until he could convince her to marry him, but it wasn’t easy. He certainly didn’t want to get in trouble now for donating sperm 20 years ago.
Published March 30, 2009
“First Trimester: Down Syndrome Test”
by Christine Redman Waldeyer
This is non-invasive
which should make me happy
but as I lay on the table
Published March 16, 2008
by Gretchen Wright
“Now this is what is meant by the term ‘copious mucous’,” the gynecologist said reverently, peering at me over the peak of my draped knees. Why did they do that – drape my knees – when they would be probing the most intimate of my body cavities? To shield me from what, exactly? “Would you like to have a look?” he asked my husband. READ MORE….
by Wendy Marcus
When she’d opened the front door that sunny spring afternoon, Lenni’s nurturing side trumped her nervousness. “Let me make you a cup of tea,” she’d said impulsively to the forensic psychologist, a moment of civility, a turning point even, in a pitched custody battle. READ MORE…
Published February 16, 2009.
“On First Reading the Introduction to Natural Birth by Toi Derricotte”
by Lenard D. Moore
I sat there like an owl
on that narrow Cranbrook bed
Published Feb. 2, 2009.
illustrations by Julia Bauknecht
Published February 2, 2009.
by Joy Mosenfelder
Why is it that rooms designed for waiting rarely seem well suited to the task? They are often defined by dark drab walls and populated by squat chairs the wrong height and width for any human form. In this room stunted tables hide their scars under offerings of last month’s issues of People Magazine, Good Housekeeping, or Time. The room is not so full as to intrude upon the solitude of each expectant patient. Even small clusters of two or three having entered together refrain from interacting once they have selected a seat. READ MORE….
Published January 20, 2009
by Genna Gardini
Where I am from we do not measure relation in corpuscles.
That is why I love you more than I know how to tell you
and I tell you all the time
Published January 19, 2009
Fiction by Christopher Woods
I couldn’t believe it. It had also been a year since we had last seen Willy. We go to the carnival every year, ride the Tilt ‘o Whirl and The Bullet, but mostly we like the midway shows. Some are gruesome, I admit, including the blue fetuses and cancerous organs, the exploded hearts and the shrunken heads. Everything floats in big bottles of formaldehyde. READ MORE
Published January 5, 2009
by Nancy Adams-Cogan
Sitting
in silent darkness
hours before dawn I am
warmed by your tiny body
READ MORE…
Published December 22, 2008
by Ann Angel
I watch my daughter and know she is nesting. Emily, my firstborn, too young to be a mother herself, moves so slowly now, burdened with the weight of this baby. I watch from the kitchen and see my daughter with skin that glows, her hair pulled back in a French braid. A woman too soon. ….READ MORE…
Published Dec. 8, 2008
by China Martens
“If my strong, beautiful, resourceful, and clever sisters feel like some kind of failure because of this, then it must be addressed. Something in the natural birth movement, meant to empower us, is creating a mythology that can work to sabotage individual truths. …..READ MORE…..
Published November 24, 2008
by Tania Pryputniewicz
There’ll be no birth plan, no lists of what scent of lotion to bring. No incense, nor hot sock of rice to heat, no rubber ball to sit upon, nor birth class to attend with paid instructors who must be clear you can’t possibly tell someone who’s never given birth what to expect…READ MORE…
Published November 24, 2008
