Tag: Peggy Turnbull

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:

Peggy Turnbull: “The River’s Gift”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

 

 

 

The River’s Gift

Once a girl found her way
in the evening, down a grassy path
that sloped and stopped beneath a bridge,
where she kneeled
on a beam of concrete shaped
like a mother’s apron
and dipped a jar
into the river’s mouth.

When her sample revealed
its pig-sty aroma,
the boys in seventh grade science
crowned her their goddess of gross,
admiring her
for the rest of the period
as she leaned to her notebook and microscope.

That was enough.
What did she care about adoration?
She’d just discovered microbes.

 

 

 

About the Author: Peggy Turnbull is an academic librarian turned poet who makes her home in the Great Lakes ecoregion of the U.S./Canada. Kelsay Press recently published her first chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness. She has poems in recent issues of Poppy Road Review, Bluepepper, Mad Swirl, and Writing In a Woman’s Voice. Her favorite hobby is to take long walks.

 

More by Peggy Turnbull:

Night Ferry

 

Image Credit: Carol Highsmith: “The 225-foot-long Saco River Bridge, a covered bridge over the Saco River in Conway, New Hampshire. Built in 1890, the Paddleford-style truss bridge includes added arches and has a posted six-ton limit for crossing vehicles.” (2017) The Library of Congress

Peggy Turnbull: “Night Ferry”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

 

 

Night Ferry 

We left his father on the other side
in a mahogany casket, his back at last
unbent, his face free of pain.
After ninety-seven years:
repose.

We huddle in the ferry’s bow.
Its steel walls, for now, protect us
from a raw, wet wind.

As it intensifies, we grope
towards warmth and light,
find them on the upper deck.
My husband drags four chairs
into a row and falls asleep,
as spent as a child.

I cover him with my pink raincoat,
keep silent watch while we cross
above the murky remains
of shipwrecks and other losses,
the engine’s shuddering pulse
our consolation.

 

 

About the Author: Peggy Turnbull is an academic librarian turned poet who makes her home in the Great Lakes ecoregion of the U.S./Canada. Kelsay Press recently published her first chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness. She has poems in recent issues of Poppy Road Review, Bluepepper, Mad Swirl, and Writing In a Woman’s Voice. Her favorite hobby is to take long walks.

 

Image Credit: Herbert G. Ponting “The Freezing of the Sea” (1911) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.