M. Brooke Wiese

April 2026 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

Unfavorable Weather Over the Bay

All week the wind pushed rough water

up over the bulkhead, wave on wave

as far as you could see to the other

side of the bay. Buffleheads and gulls, unfazed,

bobbed up and down like surfers calmly waiting

for the perfect ride, disappearing,

reappearing. A week of alternating

rain and sleet, then a brief clearing

just in time for one riotous sunset.

Overnight the wind did its best

to blow the house down; the sudden onset

of a wintery squall was the final test,

splatting windows with wet snow that obscured

the bay, then froze on power lines, knocking

out traffic lights along the Boulevard –

but it was our boiler’s failure that finally sent us packing

back to the city, the car’s heat cranked full blast,

wipers going like the dickens, the boys

asleep in the back seat, and you driving fast

as if we could somehow outrun this winter malaise.

Brooke Wiese

Brooke Wiese’s work has appeared most recently in Snakeskin, Persimmon Tree, The Orchards, The Road Not Taken, Voices and Visions Journal, New Lyre, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her second chapbook, Memento Mori, is available from Finishing Line Press, and a third, Allen Ginsberg is a Mensch, is now out from Bottlecap Press. After a very long hiatus, she has been writing furiously again. Brooke lives with her wife and sons in New York City and currently teaches at a special education inclusion school in Manhattan to high school students of all abilities. www.mbrookewiese.net

Kenneth Boyd

April 2026 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

Hot Rhythm

Archibald Motley (United States, 1961)

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

If this dream could dance, I’d feel it in my veins

Circulating in rhythms of dazzling dances

The fusion of primitive roots found in my nature

Echoes hanging in the hills like conjured arrangements

For a modulating hang-time of reckless rhapsodies

Sent a timbre of waves resonating through me

By the thunder of my heart you could find me

Not where I was brought up or the legacy in my veins

Forces of fire and wind found in rhapsodies

The dialect of my horn was heard in dances

Interpreting the lingo repeated in blazing arrangements

Cast with copper and zinc from nature

Always faster, like a sonic boom, to awaken nature

Stunning and spellbound reflection of forces in me

Elevated restoration of bright sounding arrangements

Pulling along titanic ensembles with boiling veins

“Without etiquette,” said the erudite critics of dances

Radiogenic to silvery tolerance for bullish rhapsodies

Muscle memory residue echoing in sultry rhapsodies

Repealing the imposition of new rhythms of nature

Elements of an off-beat life-force persisting in dances

The approach of a shouting force majeure in me

My war-like call as fast as cocaine in my startled veins

Jolting from an annular soul of tarnished arrangements

Melodies for any who would burnish the arrangements

Torrential intuition of endless musical rhapsodies

Coming down from hills of migrated musical veins

Translation of swelling emotions beyond a listeners’ nature

A reverie of impressionistic showgirls crushing me

Without the ability to hide in the shindig of dances

My sound and soul settling in sweet and somber dances

Brandishing luminously time-insensitive arrangements

Or a discreet show of red was a commandment

For bravery, ego, and artistry in rhapsodies

Unapologetically trenchant in a temperamental nature

A blue beret to hide the apocalypse in my veins

Knowing me was to know the riot in my veins

Swelling in arrangements of a lyrical nature

My refuge preserved in thundering rhapsodies

Art Source: https://nasher.duke.edu/stories/archibald-motley-hot-rhythm-1961/

Kenneth Boyd

Kenneth Boyd is a neurodivergent poet and former jazz musician. As an emerging writer, his poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Of Poets & Poetry, Wayfarer Magazine, eMerge Magazine, Flora Fiction, Unlost Journal, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the 2024 Royal Palm Literary Award, Empyrean Poetry Competition, and the Penumbra Poetry Contest. His debut poetry collection, Grasshopper Dreams, was published in 2023. Kenneth is a graduate of the UCLAx Creative Writing Program and an Assistant Poetry Editor at Southland Alibi magazine. He embraces life in the South with his wife and dog Stella. He enjoys fine jazz, fine cigars, and fine pork pie hats. More about him can be found at www.bardopoetry.com and @BardoPoetry on social media.