Poetry | Spring 2022
Egg
Mother
of All Wombs
Who came from my egg
Who came from my mother’s egg
Who came from her mother’s egg
Who came from her mother’s egg
Who came from her mother’s egg
Who hatched from
the mother of all
by Ondrea Bell
illustration by Ondrea Bell
YOLKSHINE
gelatinous
fibrous
a cocooned
little
body.
little
body
incubated
fickle and
gleaming
in an
oven:
preheat to 375.
little
body
not
easy bake.
mercurial
and
membranous
little
body
feeble
feeding
from
the
vitellus
or
perhaps
lux solaris.
by Paige McHatten
illustration by Austin Hart
excerpt from The Crack
She was easy to crack.
And she was certain, one day,
he would follow suit.
Love is never easy.
But with patience,
Eventually,
We crack.
by Kat Glaser
Zoological Catalogue of Eggs
Mythical and Mundane
⬮ The Martian Egg, with its opalescent shell, floats a few inches off the ground.
⬮ The Harpy Egg can be found in your local health food store. It can be identified by its dark purple shell, reflecting a nacreous sheen on the more domestic cartons. A barefoot old woman once said you can serve this egg to your enemies to give them 100 years bad luck. A recent study from Moderna suggests that consuming one harpy egg every 3 months will reduce your risk of brain cancer.
⬮ The Bad Egg is a rotten egg.
⬮ The Evil Egg will hatch a monster. It is impossible to know when. Highly unsafe to incubate this egg in the same nest as Good Eggs.
⬮ The Mermaid’s Egg is laid from the mouth of a woman who suffers severe trauma and death during her luteal phase.
⬮ Leda’s Egg is the porcelain egg from which Lina Hadidi hatched.
⬮ Inside the Mountain Egg is often found naked men contemplating existence.
Vegetale Varieties
⬮ The ovum flos is a carnivorous flower found in the mountains of Peru which is born out of an egg. Like its cousin, the corpse flower, it has a short and dramatic life. The flower’s egg first appears jutting out of the ground like a monolith as winter’s snow begins to melt around it. It gleams pure and white above the melting snow. As its specimen incubates the shell becomes translucent, revealing a strange and mangled form within. Its slow blooming shatters the shell. Its fleshy pink petals burst forth in rich color to attract a nearby hummingbird. The flower petals close promptly around the unsuspecting bird, consuming it whole. The following season, the plant will release several small egg shaped seeds. The plant’s life cycle is now complete.
⬮ The Egg Plant is a species commonly found in the vegetable gardens of North American households. Readers unfamiliar with the witch’s kitchen might be surprised to know that this plant can be used to produce any number of species when a ripe egg plant is buried under the August full moon at midnight and blessed with the proper words. Why so many witches use this special spell only to produce more and more rodents is anyone’s guess. Some botanists speculate this is a special favor to the witches’ feline familiars.