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

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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

Ilari Pass: “delayed rays of a star”

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delayed rays of a star

starts with a chance meeting—
peek-a-boo says Eve—crooked,

the night brings good counsel
for deception, the stars become

pinholes in the curtain of night,
opening up like a long fall

from the moon, feeling broken when she rises,
she hides behind a terrifying beauty

stares up at the moon, counting her dimples
she sees the beauty of her road curving

through a tranquil copse of Silver birch,
often marked by wild zinnias,

she wants to lie there and play there
and splash there on the purple edge

on the road, however, she
finds a road made straight

of Adam

the moon peers down,
she’s wishes for his hands

not made of light
she is just another, broken woman

standing in the cold
not allowed to play the lead

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About the Author: Ilari Pass holds a BA in English from Guilford College of Greensboro, NC, and an MA in English, with a concentration in literature, from Gardner-Webb University of Boiling Springs, NC. Her work appears, or forthcoming in Brown Sugar Literary, Kissing Dynamite, Unlikely Stories, Rigorous Magazine, Triggerfish Critical Review, RedFez, The Daily Drunk, The American Journal of Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Free State Review, Oyster River Pages, Common Ground Review, and others.

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Image Credit: James Abbott McNeil Whistler “Nocturne in Black and Gold” (1875)