Revisiting 2020: Our 50 Most Popular Posts of the Year

 

 

Dear As It Ought To Be Readers,

 

Despite everything 2020 threw at us, AIOTB Magazine was fortunate to receive so many brilliant poems, essays, interviews, and book reviews from writers around the world. Below, I have assembled the 50 most popular posts of the year based on the amount of hits they received. I know that few people will look back at 2020 with fondness, but maybe reviewing these posts from the year is a reminder of the resilience people have to continue to create in a crisis, and to channel the anxiety of the world into writing that connects us.

AIOTB Magazine was perhaps the only constant I had in 2020 that began and ended the year exactly the same, and completely intact. I have all of you contributors and readers to thank for that. Thanks for keeping me sane and connected to a community of writers when I most needed stability, creativity, and human connection in my life.

I have no idea what 2021 will look like, but if you keep reading and supporting each other’s work, you’ll at least have three new pieces a week on AIOTB Magazine to count on.

 

-Chase Dimock
Managing Editor

 

Poetry

Omobolanle Alashe:

Jason Baldinger:

Rusty Barnes:

Jean Biegun:

Victor Clevenger:

John Dorsey:

Ajah Henry Ekene:

Loisa Fenichell:

Jeff Hardin:

John Haugh:

Mike James:

Jennifer R. Lloyd:

John Macker:

Tessah Melamed:

THE NU PROFIT$ OF P/O/E/T/I/C DI$CHORD:

Hilary Otto:

Dan Overgaard:

Rob Plath:

Daniel Romo:

Diana Rosen:

Damian Rucci:

Leslie M. Rupracht:

Anna Saunders:

Sheila Saunders:

Alan Semerdjian:

Delora Sales Simbajon:

Nathanael Stolte:

Timothy Tarkelly

William Taylor Jr.:

Bunkong Tuon:

Peggy Turnbull:

Brian Chander Wiora:

 

 

Reviews

Chase Dimock:

Mike James:

Arthur Hoyle:

 

 

Interviews

Chase Dimock:

 

Nonfiction

Brian Connor:

Cody Sexton:

 

 

Micro Fiction

Meg Pokrass:

Delora Sales Simbajon: “Wednesday Eve at the Doughnut Shop”

 

 

Wednesday Eve at the Doughnut Shop

One has to grip the glass first
before he can throw it,
he tells me as he moves his hand

towards our shared glass.
Far from our table,
a couple is wrapped

in their murmurs.
Now and then balloons
of laughter float around them

as their eyes mirror mist
for no other reason.
They’re having buttered

doughnuts, I conclude.
Far from their thoughts
but before them, I presume,

might be glasses with chipped edges.
He does not see
them, his eyes fastened

on our own glass. He firmly
holds it while I stroke his hand.

 

 

*This poem first appeared in Philippine Panorama, 1997

 

 

About the Author: Delora Sales Simbajon writes poetry from Mindanao, Philippines where she is based with her husband, Daryl. Some of her works have appeared online, in magazines and in anthologies: In Time Passing, There are Things; Brown Child: The Best of Faigao Poetry and Fiction 1984-2012; femi.nest: History and Poems of the Women in Literary Arts, among others. She is a recipient of the Home Life Magazine poetry award (Philippines). She works in communications but is also a certified life coach. She looks forward to publishing her poetry collection soon.

 

Image Credit: John Margolies “Dohman’s Donuts sign, Vicksburg, Mississippi” (1982) The Library of Congress