July 2022 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction
Zero is a beginning and one is a beginning too. I was once a zero and became one after one year. It was then I began to walk and talk. Early, they said, but for me not soon enough.
At five I was flying, off to other States, which gave me a taste for adventure. When I was only one decade old, I spent most of my time in the woods, eating wild plants and hiding, having developed a knack for hating indoor school, which continued for many more aggregates.
At 16, I became what they call a professional (got paid) and at 1 and an 8, left home for good. Off to the big city of New York to become a ‘real’ actress, where I mostly stumbled and stopped flying. I found it difficult to maintain flight throughout my 20s and 30s with so many men telling me what to do. Directors and producers all had so much to say, like lie down and don’t tell anyone.
At 3 followed by an 8, I found God, only later to discover it was a cult. This was after 16 grueling years of hardcore belief. I was now in my fifth decade ‒ 5 followed by another 5. At this point, I fell in love and rediscovered I had a body with desires. This sent me flying again, back into my body and remembering I hated school, however disguised.
Now in my 7s followed by a zero, seven decades, I mostly live outdoors again, riffling through weeds, kissing peonies, writing essays, and witnessing too much death. Friends and otherwise. But I still have love, my body, and trees.
I may live to a one followed by two zeros. Ten decades! Back to one, followed this time by two zeros. Hopefully I’ll still be in my body on hands and knees in the dirt. Or, lying in the earth, scarred and resting, with all those zeros and ones spent.
Dian Parker
Dian Parker’s essays and short stories have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Rupture, Critical Read, Adelaide, Epiphany, Memoir Monday, Anomaly, Westerly, Channel, Capsule, Tiny Molecules, Sky Island Journal, Hotazel Review, among others, and nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and lives now in the hills of Vermont.
July 2022 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Thursday, 12:20 p.m.
Tug is listening to music at his desk.
“What’s that instrument that sounds
like a washing machine?” asks Claire.
Tug says “That’s what we in the industry
call a ‘drum,’ Claire.”
A single eyelash falls from my face,
into my yogurt cup.
A redbird taps its head against the window.
Saturday, 2:22 p.m.
I’m deep in the forest right now.
I have no time to listen
to grown men argue
whether Bib Fortuna
survived Jedi or not.
I want the forest in this poem
to function like the forest
in Shakespeare comedies:
A place of working things out,
unencumbered by social constraints.
But I may have learned that wrong.
Thursday, 3:25 p.m.
No one talks about Jane’s Addiction anymore.
Their admixture of heart and decadence.
They seemed so important at the time.
I wish a machine would take me back.
Spring is here with its dampness
and smell of shit.
A guy balancing on a skateboard
with an armful of flowers.
Justin Lacour
Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of the chapbook My Heart is Shaped Like a Bed: 46 Sonnets (Fjords 2022).
July 2022 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
The Very First Venus Flytrap
Who could blame your delicate flowers
For growing sharp teeth, for learning that flesh
Is so much tastier than sunlight
You found out it’s more satisfying to snap shut
Than it is to bloom, that it feels good to bite back
After being chewed on for so many centuries
Jaws of slender grass. Jaws of patience.
You opened your jaws once and wow
How delicious the world tasted
Look how your body transformed into a throat
Your roots into tongues and your blossoms into fists
I can hear your flora siblings whispering nervously
About the one who speaks in needles, who prefers
Blood to dew, pink fanged, an angel
With sharp wings of green, fallen straight into the dirt
Your life is now a feast of moth hearts
And iridescent beetle wings, bee stingers
With spider’s silk used as elegant floss
For your delicate lips of chattering
Knives, lips that wait patiently
To be kissed again and again
That’s why you were named after Aphrodite
Because eating the world counts as loving it twice
And who doesn’t want to die in the mouth of a flower?
Who doesn’t want to be sipped up by the Earth, cradled
Unconscious in the arms of soft petals, suffocated by sunshine
By the plant that turned into death itself?
Finally Appreciating the New Moon
It’s a blank slate, black-blessed, a moment
To enjoy the stars, not named
Like its big bright brothers are
But it should be, it’s a testament that huge unseen things
Can be floating directly above our heads and we’d never
Be the wiser, that even the persistence of sunlight
Needs sleep, no more secrets spilled
Under the moon’s sweet silver, no need for blankets
When you are concealed like an earthworm, a cavern
It’s the moon as whole as we’ve ever seen it
A clasping of two dark halves, providing rest
For our werewolves, a holy day of obligation
For all things nocturnal, if you picnic
Underneath it you enjoy the sensation of being swallowed
By the universe itself, returning to pre-light
When we didn’t have the sun to depend on
And the endless night sky
Was more comforting than any ball of fire
Phantom Hugger
Science has proven
That humans need at least eight hugs a day
And by golly I was going to get them
One way or another
I picked my targets carefully
Drooped shoulders
Downward glances
Unpresumptuous auras
All dead giveaways
I began with quick squeezes, innocent
Shoulder-to-shoulder
Single hand behind the back
Over in a second
Painless pats
Short and sweet and good for everybody
But soon it wasn’t enough, the embraces
Were lasting longer, becoming vulnerable
Soon we were eye-to-eye
And it was becoming embarrassingly difficult
To let go
People began seeking my services
On busy sidewalks and crowded nightclub
Dance floors, a vigilante
Of touch therapy, of a new
Public service
And it wasn’t long before I perfected
My technique, transformed my hugs
Into something sacred, something
Soul-to-soul
An embrace that turned me into Atlas, and you
Into the world
That wrapped around us
Again and again
Until we were lost
In a land of each other’s palms, that proved
The Earth really is
The center of the universe
That dissolved
The very concept of stranger
What I do is illegal in nearly 38 states
But if you ever need me
Go out on empty nights and raise your hands
To the dark lonely air
I promise, eventually, I’ll be there
Dante Novario
Dante Novario is an internationally published writer from Louisville, KY where he works as a therapist with special needs individuals. Nominated for both the 2022 pushcart and rhysling awards, his writing has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Firewords Magazine, KAIROS Lit, Coffin Bell Journal, New Contexts 3, Nimrod International Journal, Thin Air Magazine and others. His poetry can also be heard on the literary podcast Strange Horizons. Find more of his writing on Instagram @dante_novario
April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Bench Warrant Wednesday
You’re finally back in your hometown,
only snow greets your arrival.
Court date’s in a few hours,
just time to check into some
cheap hotel and change into clothes
that say I’m a good girl, clothes
that’ll be dumped at the charity shop
after free breakfast, local bank,
and go pay the fine tomorrow.
No time for visiting or sightseeing—
you’ll see all you want from the train
on the head-out-of-town express.
Window cracked to let a thin stream of smoke out,
you breathe in the incense of pines,
catch a quick glimpse of your old house
a little more canted, a lot less yours.
All the wildflowers buried deep until spring
do nothing to coax you back,
and you leave this town that doesn’t bear repeating
once again, the stillness of dusk broken only
by wisps of winter shadows through the trees,
a jukebox song of wild horses in your mind.
The Year of No Men
Granny’s on the front porch with me
playing gin and drinking gin.
I have a Jolt Cola to keep awake.
Mama’s coming to get me soon,
take me to the monthly family day
at the corrections house just down the road.
They call it “house” so it sounds nice,
but you can’t just leave when you want.
Daddy’s there for a while and that’s all I know.
We got a one-year lease on a nice double-wide,
Granny’s a couple rows over.
Other ladies and kids mostly fill in the rest.
Mama goes over to our real house every few weeks,
waters the plants, grabs up the bills,
cleans the messages off the garage door.
I don’t get to go ‘cause those messages—
they’re not too nice most times and mama says
I’m too young to understand.
So she brings me back a lemon pie
from the gas station mini mart
and I watch Granny get stuporfied.
Took a lotta years living
before I could sift through the truth
of our time at the trailer park,
and I made a lot of promises to myself
after that: no bail, no messages
written on any garage doors cause of me,
and gin would always be cards, jelly jars
only for juice and for baking, and “house”
would mean house, with toys in the yard.
Tobi Alfier
Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” was published by Cholla Needles Press. “Symmetry: earth and sky” was published by Main Street Rag. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).
April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
The darkest hour is just before
the middle of the night.
Mishka Shubaly, “Destructible”
I climbed the infinite staircase
that leads nowhere;
it took me almost a decade,
a fractured ankle,
a fractured rib,
a broken tooth,
my peace of mind,
and half of my soul.
I played the eleven games,
those were happier days.
But I remember the rejection,
the taste of blood in my mouth,
the humiliation,
a pitch-black bottomless pit
of youth and sadness.
I know how it feels to be depressed
at your aunt’s birthday party,
to think about death at the dive bar,
I know the strange looks you get
when you make jokes about misery,
I know how it feels
to spend the entire weekend
under a fortress of shadows and blankets.
Endless Sundays,
unnerving Mondays,
Advil and beer for breakfast.
I know.
I know.
There, there.
Black and white movies,
empty bottles of cheap white wine,
broken glass on the carpet,
suicidal fantasies at the supermarket,
tears at the airport,
cold sweat at the parking lot,
hot coffee and antidepressants,
shattered dreams and broken hearts.
That’s all that’s left:
Bad memories of the good old days.
Juan David Cruz-Duarte
Juan David Cruz-Duarte was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He lived in South Carolina for 10 years. In 2018 he earned a doctorate degree in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina. His work has been published in Five:2:One, Fall Lines, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Jasper Magazine, Blue Collar Review, Burningword, Escarabeo, Máquina Combinatoria, and elsewhere. He is the author of Dream a little dream of me: Cuentos siniestros (2011), La noche del fin del mundo (2012), and Léase después de mi muerte (Poemas 2005-2017) (2018). He lives in Bogotá.
April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Like eyes in a skull,
riveted on me,
I see the windows
of a white van
in my rearview
mirror.
I speed up
so does he
and we keep
going like this,
the sweat of fear
stinging my eyes
till I am racing,
a rabbit, with
a fox that covets,
gaining.
A sign for a business district–
the car, and my heart, slow
down. I turn off, spy a gaggle
of little boys headed home
from Cub Scouts or Bible School.
Grateful to them, I stop, roll down
the window, tell the nearest child:
“I am being followed.
Could I use your parents’ phone?”
“OK”, the kid says “I live over there,”
pointing down the road. “Get in,”
I say, “I’ll take you all home,”
and seven small boys
climb in.
I am driving slowly
when the sheriff
curious
at the sight,
of a white lady’s car
bursting
with black boys,
stops me.
I look back and see
the white van
at the turnoff
to the town,
waiting.
E. Laura Golberg
Laura Golberg’s poem Erasure has been nominated for a Pushcart 2021 Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other places. She won first place in the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.
