...Gloria Frym © 2013 Gloria Frym 2013 Gloria Frym Mother May I No, you may not go into the water, mother says as we sit on the lawn outside the public pool, all of us, a rare Sunday during a May heat wave, eating bologna sandwiches, mother her cottage cheese and tomatoes with wheat...

...Michael Homolka © 2011 Michael Homolka 2011 Michael Homolka Whoopi and My Mother My mother never makes me copy down the definition ofobnoxious like Allison Jenner’s mother makes her do. All weekend in the computer room —​ chips and salsa, Häagan Daz...

...Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer © 2016 Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer 2016 Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer Solar Plexus (my mother is away again) In your absence I twitch at your bedsheets, clutching yellow to me, snuffling for your wild smell in their tessellated flowers. Please come back, I hiss at your...

...Bryan Tso Jones © 2007 the minnesota review 2007 10 the minnesota review Bryan Tso Jones The Lesson from the Boy’s Mother Japanese men are chauvinist, she declares in that time of night when secrets turn bitter like ghosts...

...Toni Thomas © 2009 the minnesota review 2009 the minnesota review Toni Thomas My Mother’s Body Turns Traitor on Her til she doesn’t recognize herself anymore curtains the bathroom mirror scissors herself out of family photograph...

... but grew up mostly in India and Pakistan. His mother was a Saudi Muslim and his father an Austrian Jew who converted to Islam and became a Muslim scholar. Although he was no longer a believer, Asad became interested in religion and involved in Middle Eastern studies, at least in part in reaction...

... the occasional email and cards for Christmas and birthdays, with handwritten notes on the inside flaps. Carly s tone of voice sounds more curious than judgmental. Still, I get all defensive and blurt out, Well, I mean, she s my sister. I love her. Now, I m sitting in a vinyl chair at the foot of my mother s...

...Chelsey Grasso Chelsey Grasso Fortune-Telling When we walk through the sliding doors, my mother enters her king- dom. Always to the produce first, in an effort to start collecting the essentials: garlic, in cloves; lemons, by bagfuls. Did you know that walnuts are good for the heart? she asks me...

...Sara Henning © 2016 Sara Henning 2016 Sara Henning The Cells That Bind Us When our calico Manx tests the limits of her world from the basket laced with towels, my mother says she’s queening. I watch her lick her vulva in the laundry room near the water heater, amniotic sac enclos...

... of water and soda cans like boredom. They roll the bits of string from their cut-off shorts against their thighs, balls of lint under their fingernails. Now and then one of their prepaid cell phones rings, but if it’s not that boy, they don’t answer since their mothers won’t buy another refill card...

...Michael R. Schrimper © 2017 Michael R. Schrimper 2017 Michael R. Schrimper The Sunken Ship “Here we are, in the waters off the coast of Hawaii, watching my uncle enter that sunken ship. It is a giant brown ship balancing precariously on a ledge. Behind me, my mother is seething...

... in the rental Trendelenburg bed, licks his lips, and tells me a story. “So there’s this talent scout.” My father’s face is now as gaunt and sagging as his scrotum, which my mother and I now wipe. He is blotchy and bruised in improbable places, like the top of his head, where all his hair has...

..., the whole right side swallowed in orange by the time we passed. My father was shouting, “Oh Lord, oh Lord. Mary, what do we do?” “Drive on up to the Strawberry,” my mother said, calm as she ever was. “They've got a phone.” Two men on motorcycles passed us, turning into the drive. They were...

... as they dragged his father’s corpse to a faraway place. Abdul Qasim remembers feeding his mother’s goats when rockets ripped the roof of their house, when his mother, now dead, choked the air with his name. Umm Salimah remembers watching her son play with his toy before smoke engulfed her...

...Mason Nunemaker Mason Nunemaker Unfruitful When I was young my mother convinced me if I ate the black seeds of a watermelon, one would grow, like a child, in my stomach; my belly would balloon, vines crawling up my esophagus, bursting from my mouth. This is when I began calling my body...

.... We’ve seen it together thirty-six times. The last few times it almost didn’t happen. Dad was busy on the day. He asked me to watch it alone. Maybe my dad is ready to move on, but I still need to see my mother. My dad is in the bathroom panting and muttering. He goes quiet for a bit...

... kinship, secured through marriage and childbearing. Nowhere are these failures more pronounced than in Patel s rela- tionship to her mother. The mother-daughter relationship is rendered through a series of humorous letters that Patel s mother writes to Patel after she emigrates from Kenya to Britain...

... as he beat us every night :: Mother weeping softly                     nightly as he fucked her / I                        strained                   to hear the sound. In front of the class I found I could not speak. * When I was born, as I traveled through Mother, Father went outside...

... next to the ratty kitchen mat. He is look- ing up at me, hopeful and a bit sheepish, holding a ring with a small sapphire, my birthstone. What the fuck, Jim. The expression on his face is earnest. You re already married. To my mother. I know things are differ- ent now but Right. He takes a deep...