Magazine
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”
Olives I have a grocery list with olives on it. Meanwhile you have an issuance of pain aching somewhere in your left hip and the x-ray showed nothing but it makes you think of Esther. How tentatively I would step around her and she, mean in her broadcast, wide-shouldered through each game we played. Yes, I recall she needed to win every time. I’m going to make a big salad with your favorite marinated artichoke hearts and fresh dill dressing. Want to come over? We’ll walk to the pond—good exercise for you. Remember that old photo where she caught the biggest fish? It was the only instance you did not smile even though Pa told us to. He always said we should smile whatever storm blows at the door. I’ll mix up corn muffins from scratch. We’ll have a healthy meal.
About the Author: Jean Biegun’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. In 2022, her chapbook HITCHHIKERS TO EDEN was published, she received a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Christine Award for Best Prose Poem of 2021(EASTERN IOWA REVIEW). Poems have been in AS IT OUGHT TO BE MAGAZINE, GYROSCOPE REVIEW, MUDDY RIVER POETRY REVIEW, AS ABOVE SO BELOW, UNBROKEN, and other places.
Image Credit: Image originally published in Pomologie française: Paris: Langlois et Leclercq, 1846. Public domain image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
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:
Hospice
It’s nothing I can talk about, June—
I don’t even know how to be here.
I sat once with a friend who was giving
birth. That I could do, but you:
I can wash your floor, but I’m no good
at pushing you to heaven.
Let me try, though, June. Listen,
there are 16 hushed angels
at the edge of the bed, and listen,
June, they are hugging quite happily
and humming an ethereal anthem.
I’m not making any of this up.
Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy
are here, too, as well as the winner
of the 6th Annual Spelling Contest
who crowned you the 7th. He passed
on in Viet Nam, 34 years ago this month,
remember?
He is kneeling here by your elbow
and grinning your favorite winning words—
“grandeur” and “halcyon.” How did you
know the letters in “halcyon” back then,
June, without knowing the definition:
tranquil?
I am counting 7 leprechauns all
with bunches of 4-leaf clovers ready
to stuff in your hands. It will be
a blast, I can see right now.
[This poem was included in the 2008 Wisconsin Poets Calendar.]
About the Author: Jean Biegun began writing poetry back in 2000 as a way to overcome big-city job stress, and it worked. Poems have been published in Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, After Hours: A Journal of Chicago Writing and Art, World Haiku Review, Blue Heron Review, Goose River Anthology and many other places.
Image Credit: Simon Alexandre Clément Denis “Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome” (1786) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 