The Mom Egg, in its tenth annual issue, grapples with "The Body". The subject is viewed from diverse perspectives-body image, sexuality, bodies of loved ones, and our own, the mind-body, the body politic, bodies of work and of water. The body in crisis-reproductive issues, illness, aging. Celebration of the body, its beauty and functionality. The insights, sensitivity, wisdom, and humor of this issue are profound, moving, thrilling. The Mom Egg is an annual collection of sharp, articulate, and inventive poetry, fiction, creative prose and art by mothers about everything, and by everyone about mothers and motherhood.

Throughout our lives, we are on the giving and receiving end of lessons; some simple, others complex; some explicit, many, more veiled. We're taught first by mother, and father, later by teachers, peers, loves, institutions. We teach our children, and they teach us, (as Crosby Stills & Nash noted). These lessons can be inspiring and empowering or limiting and inhibiting ... In this Mom Egg, all the lessons above, and more; lessons learned and taught--funny, frightening, tragic; lessons to live by, and those better ignored. Maybe one or two for you. --Marjorie Tesser, Editor, The Mom Egg.

Phrases and words taken from a suggestion box at the Bowery Poetry Club and printed on 11 sheets. They are to be cut-up, shuffled and re-assembled as poems or sayings in game fashion.

The Mom Egg is an annual collection of sharp, articulate, and inventive poetry, fiction, creative prose and art by mothers about everything, and by everyone about mothers and motherhood.In this year's collection, Margo Berdeshevsky's photo essay excerpt "In the Shadows of Motherhood" frames poems and stories in varying light, bright to dark.Contributors: Olga AbellaMarci AmeluxenRobyn ArtA.M. BakerKelly BargabosMargo BerdeshevskyCarol BergCheryl Boyce-TaylorTammy BradshawSarah ButtenwieserRosalie CalabreseSharon Campbell Carla CarlsonPatricia CarragonLiane Kupferberg CarterSarah CavallaroMRB ChelkoFloyd CheungFay ChiangHeather DavisNicelle DavisHolly DaySandra de HelenWendy Levine DeVitoCarol DorfJacqueline DoyleIris Jamahl DunkleJennifer EdwardsA.Kay EmmertJann EverardEleanor GaffneyMarie GauthierNancy GerberJanlori GoldmanBriony GylgaytonHeather HaldemanMaryanne HannanPauletta HanselLois Marie HarrodLouisa HowerowWynne Huddleston sSuzanne KamataKelli Stevens KaneDonna KatzinCheryl KeelerChristopher KulakowskiKris LaurelCaroline LeBlancJan Heller LeviElsa MandelbaumKatie ManningBlueberry Elizabeth MorningsnowSusan MorseRachael Lynn NevinsAshley NisslerEliana OsbornCarl PalmerAnika ParisPuma PerlTess PfeiferBarbara RockmanKristin RoedellRosaly RoffmanChanell Harris RuthLee SchwartzPeter SeidmanJudith SkillmanDanielle Taana SmithGolda SolomonLydia SuarezJudy SwannChristina ThompsonTina TrasterMeredith TredeElsbeth Wofford TylerClaudia Van GervenWendy VardamanNancy VonaJonathan WellsLisa WilliamsRhonda WoodwardJoanne G.Yoshida

For mothers long on love for reading and short on time, a unique collection about being a mother and also being a daughter, partner, worker, artist. Mom Egg Review contains short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction by the best mother writers from around the world, and by others writing about motherhood. A young mother conceals her anxieties about a new pregnancy. A Caucasian mother fears for her mixed-race child. A toddler who'd become enamored of "no" learns "yes." A poet recalls her grandmother's love and lessons. At the heart of the issue is a special poetry folio themed Compassionate Action. In a world barraged with images of violence, injustice, and suffering, frustration can lead to despair and feelings of powerlessness. The poems in this section inspire compassionate action, both at home and in the world, a model and a roadmap to empowerment in urgent circumstances. Mom Egg Review can be read through or dipped into; it is a collection to read, re-read and share. Spend time with mothers from around the world who offer keen insights on day-to-day and extraordinary activities of motherhood, and inspiration for connecting to our creative, compassionate selves.

Welcome to Mom Egg Review Vol. 12 Mom Egg Review celebrates twelve years of publishing the finest poetry, fiction, and creative prose by and about mothers and motherhood. This issue features work focusing on the paradigm shift of pregnancy and child-raising, mothers' work, mothers' bodies, partnering and going it alone, loss, caring for the ill and dying, nurturing our planet, denouncing injustice, and making art. MER 12 spotlights work on subject matter often ignored by mainstream media, but pivotal to understanding our human situation. The works are insightful, brave, cynical, tragic and funny. We take great joy in presenting the work of these talented writers and artists, both established and emerging, and pride in having published such vital work for a dozen years. We value our readers' participation in our community as we keep growing and presenting the best work by and about mothers and motherhood.

Our twentieth annual print issue of MER is themed "Mother Figures." What is a mother figure? What have we been told or shown by them? What values do they reflect? What cultural learning do they assume? How does a "mother figure" deviate from one's own experiences? In online poetry and prose folios this year, we have explored several aspects of the concept: "Mother in Objects," "Mothers and Children," "The Mother Role," "Storied Mothers," and "Other Mothers." Visit our website, momeggreview.com, to explore the folios. These and other themes are investigated in the current print issue. Our contributors, established writers and emerging debut authors, responded with work that is resonant, original, and thoughtful, and which considers a dizzying range of mother figures: some worthy of emulation and some, cautionary tales, some selected and some foisted upon us. The writer may have chosen to stand outside the figure or to assume its persona. Many writers recognized lineage, a personal "mother figure," who, by existence or example, has nourished them. Here are mothers from the classics, mythology, and fairy tales. Animal, vegetable (a potato!), and mineral mothers. A surprising number of insect mothers. Mother figures from religions (many Marys), and from several cultures, including pop culture. Historical mothers. Tragic and triumphant mothers. Murderers, martyrs, and midwives. Intellectual, artist, and writer mothers. We have fairy godmothers, witches, saints and the all-too-human. Planets can be mothers, as can moons. The diversity of mother figures can be said to reflect a multiplicity of actual motherhoods. The literary and art work in this issue illuminate figures of motherhood, in concept and in practice.

This issue of MER is themed "Ages/Stages." The works in this issue shift perspectives. Mothers interpret, complicate, celebrate, and ameliorate children's milestones: a first day of school in "Red Boots" by Donna Shanley, a son's first heartbreak in Carrie Vittitoe's "A First," a pivotal event in Cheryl Fish's "A Seven-Year-Old Left Alone Shivering." Our children's stages recall our own pasts to us. Our elders' stages anticipate our future. Mothers experience their own changes, both within the role and otherwise. Mandira Pattnaik and Amy Marques recount bodies changed by birth. Francesca Bell details the hours of absorption in the child's care. "I wondered if the river carrying my hours away went anywhere. If I had squandered the one battered coin of my life when I chose to spend it on you." As Cheliss Thayer's speaker says in "Co-Sleeper," "[I]t's exhausting..." As children change with age, so does the mother. Frustration with the repetition and tedium of child-rearing can give way to nostalgia for those phases, as in Katie Manning's "Empty Toilet Paper Rolls Make Me Anxious." In later stages, the mother, no longer called upon to perform as many tasks for others, is returned to a sole self. Prudence Baird notes in "Just for Now," "[T]here is no task, no obligation, no duty coming from outside of this body of mine, filling the space between me and the rest of my life." The works in this issue show that ages and stages aren't universal, but infinitely varied; not discrete steps, but flowing, continuous. What we experience as a stage may be an awakening to changes that have already been taking place. Ages and stages are bodies moving through time, stopping now and again to notice and reflect. Time expands and contracts in Jessie Wittman's "All the Moments Exhale." Lydia Gwyn's mother and children, search for morels in "Bluegrass," providing a fitting metaphor for the closely observed work in this issue: "[L]ooking closely at soil or sand or gravel, trying to find the break in the pattern, the black triangle in the tide, the spiral in the static of the sand."

MER - Mom Egg Review presents literary work and art on motherhood and women's lives. MER supports and celebrates mother writers and artists through print and online publications, performances, workshops, and events. Enjoy our annual print issue and read more at MERliterary.com. Contributors: Deborah Bacharach, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Jennifer Barber, Carrie Bennett, Margo Berdeshevsky, Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Mary Bonina, Mary Lou Buschi, Kevin Carey, Robert Carr, M.P. Carver, Sofia Chapman, Eileen Cleary, Ashley W. Cundiff, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Ariane Dreyfus, Merridawn Duckler, Suzanne Edison, Jennifer R. Edwards, Kelley Engelbrecht, Natalie Shaw Evjen, Lupe Eyde-Tucker, Sandra Fees, Jessica Femiani, Brandel France de Bravo, Elizabeth Cranford Garcia, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, Marie Gauthier, Jennifer Georgescu, Joan Kwon Glass, Laura Goldin, Robin Gow, Pat Hale, Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick, Marie Harris, Katie Hartsock, Sarah Herrington, Katelynn Hibbard, Melissa Joplin Higley, Rae Hoffman Jager, Crystal Karlberg, Tina Kelley, Claire Keyes, Debbie Koenig, Andrea Krause, Anaïs La Rocca, Danielle Lemay, Barbara Lock, Tarisa A.M. Matsumoto, Dw McKinney, Livia Meneghin, Chloe Yelena Miller, Gloria Monaghan, Abby E. Murray, Loretta Oleck, Dayna Patterson, Anne Elezabeth Pluto, Jennifer Pons, Kyle Potvin, Kimberly Ann Priest, Jessica Purdy, Kimberly Ramos, Glenis Redmond, Jeff Rivers, Tessa Ellison Rossi, Karen Elizabeth Sharpe, Martha Silano, Dorsía Smith Silva, Anne Starling, Meghan Sterling, Darlene Taylor, Elaine Terranova, Pramila Venkateswaran, Lauren Walke, Annelies Zijderveld

Welcome to Mom Egg Review Vol. 14-the Change issue! Change can be a lightning bolt, a bud's unfurling, or the inexorable melt of ice caps. A body swells with pregnancy, bends with illness, shrinks with age; a couple evolves or severs; a child slowly cycles through a myriad of incarnations. Or tornado, bomb, gunshot. Change is acute and cyclical, rhythmic and cataclysmic, personal and political, abstract and physical, natural and un-, absolute and incremental, often too gradual or too precipitous. Change is not just one-directional flow, something that happens to us-we can affect its course, embrace, finesse, challenge, or stem it. Mothers often serve as society's first responders, interlocutors of change for children and often others. There is also change that we make. Mothers effect change by example and by action, by our works-life and art. The works in this issue look unblinkingly at change; they investigate, interrogate, and implement change, local and global. Enjoy the frank, thoughtful, and powerful poems and stories in this issue. May they inspire you to create the good changes needed in your world.