October 2025 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction
Sleeping Arrangements
- On a Bronx fire escape, curled up on couch cushions, desperate for a breeze
- With my sister in a top bunk that belongs to our cousin, in a room that isn’t ours, in a Brooklyn apartment never meant for us
- In a bedroom hardly bigger than the bed, with my mother and my brother and my sister, lying head to foot in a pointless effort to give each other space
- On two lumpy armchairs shoved together as a makeshift berth after the first eviction
- Near the window in an armchair, pen still in hand, scribbling my stories before morning traffic wakes the others
- At a desk in class, chin propped on palm, until an ill-shaven Jesuit pauses his lecture on Aeschylus to poke me with his cane
- On a carpeted floor that smells of beer and party smoke, too drunk to drive home, too scared to face my mom
- In too many beds with too many strangers hoping I’ll wake early and be gone
- Beneath the sound of a seagull’s song in the hot, salty air, on a blanket not far from the water’s edge
- In a rocker near the window, where a streetlamp keeps watch nonchalantly while I nurse a baby too curious to sleep
- Night after night under a Ninja Turtles comforter with a child in my arms till his fever breaks or the bogyman concedes defeat
- On a train that left for the city before dawn, crowded with thick coats, aging briefcases, and rigid to-do lists
- With two restless Little Leaguers, all elbows and knees, who’ve stayed up too late, wired on candy they’ve looted in Frankenstein’s name
- In our cabin’s top bunk, with bugs rude and riotous outside and my knees scraping the ceiling’s wooden planks
- At the dining room table at two in the morning, face down on a yellow legal pad crammed with fits and starts of dialogue and margin notes
- In costly New York hotel rooms paid for by clients who expect me at their conference tables at eight a.m. sharp, no matter how many first days of school I have to miss
- In a flimsy tent with my eight-year-old, both frightened by the pounding rain and relentless darkness
- In a window seat, engines growling, legs cramped, hours to go
- On a recliner, clutching a Teddy bear, waiting again for a teenager to arrive home safely
- On someone else’s sheets, with someone else’s husband
- At a New England B&B, the smell of bacon drifting in, the day ours alone
- On my meditation cushion, with the best of intentions
- Folded into the arms of someone who loves me, at last
- Sitting at my desk in Midtown, chair turned toward the windows of the fortieth floor across the way, framing suits that move with mysterious purpose and talk that makes no sound
- On the shoulder of a Mets fan, somewhere in the sixth inning
- In a Broadway theatre, on a New York weeknight in a seat we paid too much for
- Fitfully, in a chair at the bedside of my son drying out in an emergency ward
- Swaying in a hammock under a June night’s sky, believing the worst is over
- In a queen-sized bed, in a master bedroom, alone
- Soundly on a loveseat in my study, a first draft finally done
- Tossing and turning in a room beneath a room where a young man lies homeless again, no match for his demons, fearing I will trade my life for his
- With the touch of a grandchild’s breath on my cheek, his weight on my heart, sensing but not seeing that there’s only this moment
Mary Ann McGuigan
Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, Citron Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The Sun, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals have published her fiction. Her collection Pieces includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her new story collection, That Very Place, was released in September 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com.
October 2025 | Best of Net nominee, poetry, Pushcart nominee
Why Thinking About Taxis Makes Me Sad
I could never trust an Uber or a Lyft,
and I have my own car anyhow.
But should I have the need, I’d prefer
a taxi with bright colors or checkers
and the wide, bulbous car body, as if
other car bodies or frames are underneath,
so the taxi can shed one, like a cicada does,
and move on to its next destination or passenger,
someone waiting streetside and almost desperate
for a ride and to get somewhere safely
in a city where the passenger knows nobody
and needs to get somewhere that may look like
a home for one or two nights and where
there may be the potential for a face that
might make softer the darkness and the unknown
of an unfamiliar city or maybe even someplace
in the country where without a full moon or any
moonlight, the darkness feels like a seal of wax
on the back of an envelope that will never be
cracked by anyone I know or love but only by
a stranger in the night behind a desk with keys
hanging on hooks on the wall and he can’t or won’t
find mine, so I keep walking in the dark
in some cold warehouse district like those
on TV where they find the dead or barely
alive bodies in an old tractor trailer, or
in some cornfield just beyond the edge of the lights
on the highway where the arms of those I love
have become the stubble left long
after the harvest, and the sun
has gone down on my life.
Buzz Lightyear Won’t Forgive You,
nor will the ceramic cat
with the Felix tick-tock eyes.
It’s the people far down
on the street that matter, those
we can barely see for our being
so far up in this silver skyscraper
that makes us forget and not care
about who’s below.
But we can get close again, and the people
can get large, so we don’t forget who and what
they are, so they don’t have to flee
when the hammer drops and the sparks fly.
Doug Funnie we know
is your hero, so quiet and unassuming.
He knows what’s important: the weave
of the living room rug, the fine-enough cotton
sheets that make up your bed, the doctor
who once made house calls and popped
the cork at your wedding.
These are the people who call
your name, who will pat your shoulder
when you need it, who know that magna tiles
gather even more color in the late morning
sun on the porch floor where toys tell
the stories, where playtime is the
supreme value that we should talk about
in church and political speeches,
so we never forget what it’s like
to be pushed on a swing, to have the touch
on the back that keeps us going,
so we don’t forget that hand and those
fingers when we let go and throw ourselves
into the air, assured of the balance
the arms will find and gather
to stick the landing and make sure
the heart is everywhere
the blood flows and may want or think
to go.
Pete Follansbee
Pete Follansbee likes writing in the early morning dark and lives in Richmond, Virginia, a good place to survive climate change and political uncertainty. This summer, Pete’s poems have appeared online in Humana Obscura, the Rockvale Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. In the past, Pete’s poems have been finalists in contests and have found publication in The North American Review, Barrow Street, The New Guard, About Place, New Millenium Writings, and elsewhere. An MFA graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, Pete was a T.A. for poet Tim Seibles at the summer 2017 edition of The Writer’s Hotel and a Faculty Assistant for their 2021 Virtual Poetry Weekend. And this coming June 2026, Pete looks forward to being a Director’s Assistant at The Writer’s Hotel in Maine. Pete has a website of his published poems at petefollansbee.com.
July 2025 | Best of Net nominee, fiction
The Tender Earth
Our mothers die quickly. When we grieve, time rushes out of us like old light. They lowered the body into the black end of the ground. All the worms turned, delighted. The sun threw itself on the dirt like a lover returning. I couldn’t help but sink after her. I went in like a delirious fly. My body thunked with the weight of all its years. I was made of gold. They didn’t pull me out; a mutual understanding flossed between their silence. One hand after the other tossed the tender earth over us, the dirt a showering of black stars. I curled my head on my mother’s dead shoulder and pressed against her like a newborn shadow. A year later, I emerged from that grave, a thousand sheets of air driving though me. I could feel her moving beneath my feet like a barge on the river. But I adored the sight, the sun with its throat on display, yellow on either end of this terrible world.
Rome Smaoui
Rome Smaoui is a Tunisian poet and writer born in 2003. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, SMOKE Magazine, Litbreak Magazine, Rejected Literature, and other places. She has recently received her Bachelor’s in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. Upon graduating, she was awarded the 2024 George Gissing Memorial Prize for her Fiction and the 2024 Alun Lewis Prize for her Poetry.
July 2025 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Huck at the altar of drainage culverts
twice a day
he leans into concrete tunnels that run beneath
driveways, trusting in what waits amid wet leaves, grass
clippings, the effluent of suburbia – he is a true believer, a witness
who recalls a raddled tabby within one gutter’s
curve – temptation dwelling in the swirl
and shadows
the cat is long gone
but still our walks include vigils at each grated altar
our own Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage
of fidelity, a leaning in, nose-to-ground petition
to see if today will be the day
of revelation
at leash-end
I watch his loyal seeking, his peering into circles
of dark and empty, and long for his faith
of returning again and again
Lucinda Trew
Lucinda Trew is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. Her work has been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, Susurrus Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, storySouth, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in the piney, red clay piedmont of North Carolina with her jazz musician husband, two dogs, two cats, and far too many books to count. Her collection, What Falls to Ground, is forthcoming from Charlotte Lit Press.
July 2025 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
I’ve Spent My Life Separated from Living
Separated by doors, windows, walls—
swallowed by digital throats, settled into a stomach
where I collected friends and hearts like stamps.
I’m not sure what I want on my gravestone, but I know
it’s not: Comfortable Suburbanite. Perpetually Online.
I’m interested in interruptions: how from a night sky
a lightning bolt sunders a solid oak or birch,
how an evening without electricity gathers us
like moths to the candlelight in each others’ eyes,
how eyes lock from across a busy train station,
how a train can usher a leaper or an accidental
dreamer into eternity. Eternity has already begun
and my life is a blip somewhere in its predawn.
In the predawn, my one job is to flash like a firefly,
to refuse to drown in the comfort of the dark.
Bethany Jarmul
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer, poet, writing coach, and workshop instructor. She’s the author of a poetry collection, Lightning is a Mother, and a memoir, Take Me Home. Her work has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Rattle, Brevity, and Salamander. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature and Best Small Fictions and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She’s a grant recipient from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.
