Spring Issue: Poems on Children and Childhood

1. Trying to still the children for a photo— Danielle Mcmahon
2. Child on a Seesaw—Cortney Davis
3. Me and Mary in Formaldehyde— Ted Mico
4. In the Beginning— Lorraine Jeffery
5. Hallway— Rebecca M. Ross
6. “Garbha Vidya”: A Triptych— Basudhara Roy
7. Mothers—Rakhi Dalal
8. Only Child— Candice Louisa Daquin
9. Child play—Rituparna Sengupta
10. All the Children of My World—by Adnan Kafeel ‘Darwesh’ translated by Rituparna Sengupta

Trying to still the children for a photo— Danielle Mcmahon

is a simple matter of physics,

a wending metaphor,

a jar of fireflies,

a tin-can telephone, for

my shutter speed cannot

match to capture

the verb and reverb of

such giddy atoms,

a giggling symptom

charged with the challenge

of time-keeping—

those blurred

expressions, stolen

mid-laughter.

Danielle McMahon is a mom of two and an occasional poet.  Her most recent work can be found in Unlost, Street Cake, and Major 7th Magazine

Child on a Seesaw—Cortney Davis

Child on a seesaw,

her heart clenched white from clinging.

She is the fulcrum; the point on which everything

depends, her body whipped

like sea grass as her mother

goes down, solid on her side, while Dad

goes up, and when the board stops

gives that second little hop in the air.

They have placed their child in the middle

for balance—because she has her father’s face,

that raised eyebrow, eyes like down-turned moons;

because she has her mother’s fear,

her dream of fire, that barn full of horses, burning.

When the girl grows up

she will have children of her own:

one for Father’s face, one for Mother’s fear,

as if she has split herself in two. 

At night, she’ll line up her children’s shoes,

right shoe on the right, left on the left,

toes even, laces casually across the tongues—

a ritual of balance.  She will do this until one day,

she lets go.  Imagine a child on a seesaw,

flying toward her parent’s outstretched hands,

sliding between, but never quite, caught.

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