Magazine
Sarah Carleton: “Point of Reference”
Nada Faris: “The Way Forward”
Cal Freeman: “Essay On Whistler”
John Grey: “Relationships, Your Argument”
Kristen Keckler: “Woman and Sewing Machine”
Garth Pavell: “Cascade Loop”
Jason Ryberg: “Garden of Guilt”
Dudley Stone: “Bad Roommates”
R. A. Allen: “Bluing”
James Benger: “pep talk”
Bonnie Demerjian: “A Lesson Not Taught in Supermarket School”
Adele Evershed: “loopy”
Hedy Habra: “Whatever Remains of What We Once Knew So Well?”
Madison Woodle: “Worms”
Robin Wright: “Rough Waters”
Ruth Bavetta: “My Father’s Shirts”
Jacob Butlett: “Feeding Time at the Zoo”
John Compton: “the musical of the bell jar”
A.M. Hayden: “Ghost Leg”
Joshua Lillie: “What Becomes A Tumbleweed”
Joseph Mills: “Retinue”
J.R. Solonche: “The Ceiling”
Alicia Wright: “She doesn’t wish me dead”
Sam Culotta: “A Winter Coat”
Paul Ilechko: “Memories of a Memory”
Madison Isbell: “corpus christi, early march”
Lindsay McLeod: “Sleeping Dogs”
Andrew Mulvania: “Self Portrait As The Grasshopper Trapped Inside Van Gogh’s Olive Trees”
Abner Oakes: “Floating Teeth”
Sterling Warner: “Slap Shot”
As It Ought To Be is proud to announce our nominees for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology.
Laurel Benjamin: “Motel Room Without a Night Light”
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella: “Quilted Rainbows”
Karina Castrillo: “I never wanted you to be like us”
Felicia Clark: “Chrome Cheers”
Paul Ilechko: “A Life in Art”
Jimmy Pappas: “The Ineffable”
Sarah Angstadt: “Counterproductive Side Effects”
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal: “Hearing Aid”
Sue Blaustein: “Serving Orders at Brother’s Foods”
John Brantingham: “The Greening of Creatures”
J.D. Isip: “Triceratops”
Paul Jones: “Two Flamingoes at Pea Island Reserve”
Samuel Prestridge: “My Father, Hailing from Ignorant Hill, Texas…”
Diana Rosen: “NEWS ITEM: Westside Pavilion to be UCLA Biomedical Research Center”
M.J. Arcangelini: “A List of Lessons”
Susan Cossette: “Bad Marguerite”
Joseph Geskey: “STEM As Part of A Flower”
Justin Karcher: “In Buffalo, Our Dads Come Back From the Dead to Watch the Big Game With Us”
Robert S. King: “Behind Some Photographs”
Tim Peeler: “Before the Storm, the Hawks”
Agnes Vojta: “Refuge”
Jennifer Worrell: “Behind the Lines”
James Benger: “Entrance”
Barbara Daniels: “White Horses”
Cal Freeman: “Always”
Mari Kitina: “Only the Rice Cries”
Michael Lauchlan: “Trout”
Richard Levine: “For Want of Care”
Dudley Stone: “Turbulence”
Meredith Wattle: “Erie Goliath”
Ann Weil: “Living Through”
Jean Biegun: “On Call”
Karina Castrillo: “I never wanted you to be like us”
John Grey: “Photographs”
Geoffrey Heptonstall: “Floating”
Andrea Horowitz: “Behind Midnight’s Curtain I Recompose Your Birth”
Leonard Kress: “A Night at the Opera”
Laurie Kuntz: “Sooner or Later”
Leigh Parsons: “Still Frozen”
Matthew Pritt: “Joseph F. Seaborn, 1898-1956, Mary B. Seaborn, 1906-“
William Taylor Jr.: “Poem for the New Year”
Wardenclyffe
The present is theirs. The future, for which I really worked, is mine.
-Nicola Tesla
Is what I imagined tangible—
this motor, powered by fireflies,
streamer arc threads of phosphorescent light
discharging from the center coil.
I go from idea to reality,
a star among the stars.
I do not think there is any thrill
like the inventor seeing a creation come to success,
the exhilarating sense of the future.
Sometimes we feel so lonely.
Someday we will know who we really are.
If my current can travel distances,
my work is immortal—
resurrecting my vision, broadcasting to Mars.
Thought is electrical energy.
Why can’t we photograph it?
The primary circuits of us all,
high-speed alternators—
many colors, myriad frequencies.
Sometimes we feel so lonely.
Someday we will know who we really are.
My tower dream ran out of funds—
demolished to scrap,
the property sold to the highest bidder.
I live on credit at the Waldorf,
along with spark-excited ghosts.
My only friends are pigeons in Bryant Park—
My favorite is a female.
As long as she lives,
There is light in my life.
Sometimes we feel so lonely.
Someday we will know who we really are.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: “Tesla sits with his “magnifying transmitter” in Colorado Springs in 1899″ Image courtesy of Wikipedia. CC BY 4.0
As It Ought To Be 
