Tag: Loisa Fenichell

Revisiting 2020: Our 50 Most Popular Posts of the Year

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

 

 

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:

Loisa Fenichell: “I know now I did not fabricate the sky”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

 

 

 

I know now I did not fabricate the sky 

Or how sunset grows in resemblance to a child’s
arm. In one home, a boy learns to walk like his grandfather.
Outside, the Elephant Tree strengthens itself out over
the desert: all people are not lost: water spreads little here;
when it does, citizens remember to celebrate. I walk
with fingers peeled apart, to gaze with care at the goodness
of the wren alighted atop the Saguaro. I imagine it to be
protecting its eggs, like how I know I must protect my
own infant, though she is still only a fragment
of my imaginings: how well daughters protect daughters,
the lines of heritage a woven sea; flocks of sandhill cranes
moving to Nebraska. In my own home, I still drink tea —
honey-less, unlike my mother. I have learned that the best
form of prayer is to wait as the tea steeps, gentle, with
the knowledge that the liquid stays liquid. Later I sleep,
clothed in darkness, recalling my obsession with myth,
the looks I once gave to the mirror, when I felt my stomach
had not obeyed my own narrative. Yet I am here, trusting
in all I cannot see, cannot fathom, to blow out the dustings
I for so long allowed to rest atop my bureau: photographs
of ancestors who believed in a God, & saw that even when
all seemed to wane, great fields still existed with care.

 

 

About the Author: Loisa Fenichell holds a BA from SUNY Purchase College, where she studied Creative Writing and Literature. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in various publications, such as The Winter Tangerine Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, No Contact Mag, and The Nervous Breakdown. Her debut collection, ‘all these urban fields,’ was published by nothing to say press. She is currently an MFA candidate at Saint Mary’s College of California.

 

Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Saguaro Cactus near Tucson, Arizona” (2008) The Library of Congress