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:

Jean Biegun: “Hospice”

 

 

 

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.