Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying: Collaborative Writing, Motherhood, and the Atom Bomb
In Inger Christensen’s long poem Alphabet, first published in Danish in 1981, the poet cooks potatoes. And atom bombs exist. While she stands in the kitchen peeling potatoes under the…
From the Editors: the Motherhood Issue
We’re trying to think back to the origins of A. Bradstreet: We remember that I was working in the Poetry Room at Harvard. That I came by to drop off…
Imagining Mothering (excerpt)
1. A friend says motherhood is like living with your heart outside your body. This is more like science fiction than it seems at first, I decide days after we’ve…
blk/wooomen revolution: Orbiting Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker and Elizabeth Alexander
When PBS begins airing the documentary BaddDDD [i] about the life of Sonia Sanchez, it is the middle of the semester, my sixth wedding anniversary is just coming or going, my…
Un Regno (A Kingdom) Among the Weeds
I speak to my son in Italian—I am a so-called heritage speaker. Teaching your child a second language, according to many studies, increases not only linguistic ability, but also cognitive…
Undone by One Another
About a week into winter term, Zelda, a two-year old Pitbull mix who had been found abandoned in the high desert, gave birth to a litter of eight puppies. The…
Between Light and Dark
We’re folding laundry on our bed. What do you call a pregnancy scare without the “scare” in it? Thomas asks. Close call? Nope. Still sounds negative. He means, what…
Failing to Make : Out of Absence : Toward Poiesis
“And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and…
My Son, Outnumbered
There’s my eleven-year-old son walking down the sidewalk. He has a bounce to his gait, a little shuffle, taking an extra small step when he comes to a stoplight, almost…