Author: asitoughttobemagazine

Ruth Bavetta: “Signals”

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Signals

This winter did not bring the hazy world
of wet, nor the susurrus of falling

beads of rain, yet the year proceeded.

Green hills faded to brown. The flowering
plum became a harbinger too soon.

Now we have the nameless season elbowing

into spring. Rudely thrusting back the rain
it beckons summer heat before its time,

pulls forth the breath of August

while April dissolves in bright and light,
calls for spark and ember, the errant

cigarette, the bit of broken glass,

tears up the pages of the calendar
to build an illicit and illegal fire

that will last to light our closing.

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About the Author: Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, American Poetry Review, Tar River Review, North American Review and many other journals and anthologies. Her books are Fugitive Pigments and Flour, Water, Salt (Futurecycle Press), Embers on the Stairs (Moon Tide Press), and No Longer at This Address (Aldrich Press). She has been a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee.

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More By Ruth Bavetta:

Neon Boneyard

A Murder

Spell to Name the Unnameable

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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Utah Cliffs”(2021)

Frank C Modica: “Language of Love”

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Language of Love

sunlight dusts the kitchen
like a whisper
the food-stained handwritten
index card rests
on a pile of week-old ads

the pasta machine
sits  ready for the white flour,
water, and Crisco
mixed and measured
with familial fingers and eyes

after the final pass
through the hand-cranked machine
many hands take turns
with the rolling pin
to shape the dough
into soft rectangles
a plume of flour
covers everyone like snow

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About the Author: Frank C Modica is a cancer survivor and retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. When he isn’t writing he’s riding a bike or volunteering with various local agencies. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Blue Mountain Review, Lemonspouting, and Fahmidan Journal. Frank’s first chapbook is forthcoming from Alabaster Leaves publishing.

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Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “An Amishwoman rolls dough to make small fried pies inside the farmhouse at Yoder’s Amish Home, an authentic Amish farm that began accepting visitors in 1983 near Walnut Creek in central Ohio, along the “Amish Country Byway” Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain.

John Dorsey: “A Chicken Strip in the Shape of A Seahorse”

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A Chicken Strip in the Shape of A Seahorse

sold by a high school girl
in a hairnet
who can’t swim

is proof
that god
once danced
underwater.

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About the Author: John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), and Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

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More By John Dorsey:

Anthony Bourdain Crosses the River of the Dead

Punk Rock at 45

Perpetual Motion

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Image Credit: Digitally enhanced image from Arcana, or, The museum of natural history : London, Printed by George Smeeton for James Stratford,1811. Public Domain. Image Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Tohm Bakelas: “mother’s day 2021”

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mother’s day 2021

two calls made at
8:51am and 8:01pm
went unanswered

between those times
a heron watched
you both play with your
friends at a park
and then evening rains
absorbed your
joyful screams

masks of disappointment
worn to bed couldn’t
be taken off

“you guys tried, you called,
it’s not your fault she didn’t
pick up, you tried twice.”

another day x’ed
off the calendar

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About the Author: Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 10 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.

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Image Credit: Jacob Byerly “Portrait of a Woman” (1855) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

AIOTB Magazine Announces Our Nominees for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

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As It Ought To Be Magazine is proud to announce our nominees for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology, published by Sundress Publications.

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Nadia Arioli: On “I Walk Without Echo” By Kay Sage

Frank Gallimore: The Shape of My Name

Ken Hines: What the Children Know

Dan Overgaard: Drifting Off

Ilari Pass: Delayed Rays of a Star

Melody Wang: All That My Mother Cultivates

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Congratulations to our nominees, and thank you to everyone who contributed to AIOTB Magazine this year!

-Chase Dimock
Managing Editor

John Grey: “An Emergency Somewhere”

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An Emergency Somewhere

Sirens wailing,
an ambulance rips a hole in afternoon silence.

The ceramic horse on the mantel had a stroke.
The decanter on the kitchen table was assaulted.

You’re clutching your stomach.
I press my hands to my head.

But the ambulance passes by,
the sound fades in the distance.

There’s no emergency
in what we have.
Just contentment,
as always.

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About the Author: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.

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More By John Grey: 

Move On

Downsizing

Maud

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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “New Mexico Plains” (2021)

Jason Baldinger: “these blue veins (for lilly portage)”

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these blue veins (for lilly portage)

there’s a copy
of leaves of grass
aging in the back window
of my saturn, cover now
sunbleached, dog-eared
torn, well toned
with car windows down
pages wriggle free
to blow in the wind
of interstate america

I brought walt along
for ceremony in 2012
on day two of 75
cross country travels
getting down to the real
america wherever

on morning two
with reverend copilot
in that green corner
neighbor of the lake, harliegh cemetery
we read whitman at whitman
while he brushes whisps
of the civil war’s hair

I tramp a perpetual journey
look for the soul in these eyes
this lost nation
looking for myself
in the mirrors of maps
strewn across front seat

walt has traveled with me since
a talisman for luck on these
endless miles where anything
is a moment lost in the weight
of every other moment
where every city fades
in the full throat of the rear view

I can’t count all the small town stars
the fireworks and sunsets
all the loneliness found
across these blue veins

like that years pass
I’m standing in a carwash
vacuuming the saturn
for one last ride
holding this dog-eared
abused talisman

I can’t throw it out
in a trashcan, in the last
of winter’s light even if
it is wholly disposable
it carries weight, o
how sweet the silent backward tracings

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About the Author: Jason Baldinger is from Pittsburgh and looks forward to roaming the country writing poems again. His newest books are A Threadbare Universe (Kung Fu Treachery Press) and The Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press). A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010- 2020 (Kung Fu Treachery) is forthcoming later this year. His work has been published widely across print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on lp’s by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.

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More Poetry by Jason Baldinger:

This Ghostly Ambience

It was a Golden Time

Beauty is a Rare Thing

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Image Credit: Digitally altered photo of Walt Whitman. Public Domain.

Imran Boe Khan: “A Thousand Miles from Your Bedside”

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A Thousand Miles from Your Bedside

I’ve watched you lose life
in measures I cannot grasp.

Distance was the only way to escape
the time loop back to my origin story.

I’d like to say I travelled
to reinvent myself

though I know I just wanted a reason
to not be the one closing your eyes.

They are emissaries from your conscience;
I fear the contradictions they carry.

I have spent my years pursuing an unreachable remoteness,

knowing my life has been yours to roam through
like a mother tasting her own poisoned milk.

While I cower beneath a son’s first day at school,

a daughter’s graduation party, I can feel those eyes
fumbling their ways softly across my face,
lighting a wick beneath the chiselled brow
they cannot read.

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About the Author: Imran Boe Khan has work appearing in places such as the Rumpus, Sixth Finch, Cosmonauts Avenue, Yes, Poetry, and The Bitter Oleander. A previous winner of the Thomas Hardy Prize, Imran is a lecturer at Bournemouth University, and lives in Christchurch, Dorset.

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Image Credit: Broncia Koller-Pinell “A Bedroom Interior” (1895) Public Domain

Ronnie Sirmans: “Cygnus”

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Cygnus

    Homo homini lupus.
    (A man is a wolf to another man.)
                – Latin proverb

We think we are wolves.
I often don’t see the lupine
although I know most of us
can live quite carnivorously.
But the ravenous I admire
comes from the Latin cygnus.
A man is a swan to another man.

Wolves can pull like vicious tides,
while swans push wakes of silence.
Canine hairs scatter like fallen leaves,
while feathers are a welcome snow.
Swans carry a grace of awareness.
Whether ivory or ebony or other hues,
their bodies can iridescently blind us.

A swan is a man is a wolf too.
A man drowned when a swan
protecting his mate overturned
the thin kayak and kept the man
from swimming safely ashore.
Old wives’ tales (and old husbands)
say male swans who are defending
a mate, a nest, or their supposed honor
can break a man’s arm—or his heart.
Swans will hiss. Swans can bite.
You say: but they have no teeth.
Let me tell you, they do, they do.

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About the Author: Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta print newspaper digital editor whose poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Atlanta Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Fathom, and elsewhere.

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More by Ronnie Sirmans:

Sloughing Words

The Word with the Schwa that’s Really a Short U

Remembering the Great Flood in the Frozen Food Aisle

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Image Credit: Digitally enhanced image from A natural history of birds London :Printed for the author, at the College of Physicians in Warwick-Lane,MDCCXLIII-MDCCLI [1743-1751, i.e. 1750-1776?] Public Domain. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Maryfrances Wagner: “Love Should be More Like Yarrow”

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Love Should be More Like Yarrow

One small leaf will speed decomposition
of a wheelbarrow full of raw compost.

Its root secretions activate disease resistance
of nearby plants.  It intensifies

medical action of other herbs, a booster
that enhances the power of others. Meant

to heal, it staunches cuts and wounds, aids
colds, and fevers.  Blood cleanser.  Easer

of toothaches.  Drought tolerant.  Content
to live in pastures, embankments, roadsides,

waste ground, and from a ditch, it waves
to us with its feathery foliage and yellow blooms.

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About the Author: Maryfrances Wagner’s books include Salvatore’s Daughter, Light Subtracts Itself, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award for Literary Excellence), Dioramas, Pouf, The Silence of Red Glass, and The Immigrants’ New Camera. Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Natural Bridge, Voices in Italian Americana, Unsettling America:  An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin Books), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), Bearing Witness, The Dream Book, An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation), et.al.  She co-edits I-70 Review and served as Missouri’s Individual Artist of the Year for 2020.

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More by Maryfrances Wagner:

Dreaming Through Covid

Losing Cousin Carolyn

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Image Credit: Digitally edited illustration from: Eclogae plantarum rariorum aut minus cognitarum Vindobonae :Sumptibus auctoris, typis Antonii Strauss …,1811-1844. Public Domain. Image courtesy of The Biodiversity Heritage Library