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
April 2026 | poetry
Are You Coming Back
Last night I tossed and turned, the night
torn mad with slamming doors and clanging radiators.
I threw pillows and covers all over
the room, woke in a terrible cold sweat.
I walked to the kitchen gingerly, feeling
the swollen, sore pad of my foot where I
picked up that barbed sliver of floorboard
like a prison shank. How sweet,
thinking about that splinter
and the way you came to me then, bent
to your knees, and pulled it out.
The kitchen was dark, the sink full of dirty plates.
I opened the refrigerator door,
the light illuminating everything. I pulled
the half drunken quart bottle from the door,
unscrewed the cap, and inhaled
the miasma
of tired, flat beer.
It smells so much better
on your breath, tastes better
on your mouth. I twisted
the cap back on, set the bottle in the door
and let it fall shut. Everything was dark
again. I lumbered to the sunroom and sat
in the red leather chair where you fold yourself
behind half-smoked cigarettes.
The leather was cold as was the streetlight
shining across the floor where windblown
ashes scuppered into dark corners
like paper thin insects. I sat
the rest of the night on the mattress
in the living room, washed in the glow of the TV,
a pair of pliers in one hand,
needle nose in the other, fixing
the bracelet that broke in the dining room
that night I tried to link it round your wrist.
It’s fixed now. Are you
coming back for it?
Dawson Steeber
Dawson Steeber is a union carpenter working, reading, and writing in Akron, Ohio. His poems and fiction can be found in Thank You For Swallowing, Pink Disco, Halfway Down the Stairs, CC&D, and elsewhere.
April 2026 | poetry
Angels in the Architecture
Suppose there are angels
in every room, sometimes seen,
at times confused with ghosts,
but no, ghosts are impatient wanderers,
quick to put on boots &
stomp through the hedges.
Angels, half-asleep, thinking of cellos &
the flicker of a candle flame
reflected in a lover’s eye
Angel in the kitchen adding sugar
to the batter—vanilla too. Angel
in the bedroom stroking your hair
back to sleep at quarter to three.
Angel in the entry hall
trying on jackets, taste of rain.
Another angel in the attic
reading classics & teaching
mice multiplication tables.
In the basement, dirty feet,
bored & sometimes tapping
on pipes, music angel in a
choir of dark.
Forgotten, the angel in the bathroom,
unkindly lit, strong enough to
keep that razor locked in a
cabinet, ready to distract you
with a perfume trace of yesterday.
Travis Stephens
Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain who lives in California. His book of poetry, “skeeter bit & still drunk,” was published by Finishing Line Press. Visit him at: zolothstephenswriters.com
April 2026 | poetry
what will I do until then?
buy seven white nectarines at the farmer’s market, eat one each day,
do this over and over as the nectarines become pears, the pears become
winter, the leaves will turn to eggshells underfoot, and I won’t
remember what it was like to live in a green world
are you also a child in this way? I mean dropping so heavily
into each season, it feels infinite in all directions
time like a puddle, like the cuffs of the sweater I wore to the beach
in September, believing I wouldn’t need to touch the ocean
what do I want now? a slap to the inner thigh
hard enough to bring me back into my body
groceries, and the energy to use them to make something
beautiful for myself and someone else, and the someone else
once, I held onto everything so hard I’d have to
command my fingers slack at bedtime
a still frame of my life in this moment reveals
I am as sad as ever, and loving so quietly
Mia Sitterson
Mia Sitterson (she/her) is a postpartum doula and dancer moving and grooving in Washington, DC. Her poetry finds roots in her queer, Jewish, Cuban-American body. She was selected as a featured writer for Khora Magazine, where she published “postpartum: three poems” and was a finalist for the ONLY POEMS Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize. For the last six years, she has run a biweekly queer poetry group out of her living room. Over two hundred people have written poems in this space.
April 2026 | poetry
With Barely a Smack
on the keister,
our young brother
was sent back
down home
to till his soil
solo,
Vesuvius bile
vomited
out of bitter lips –
even still!
Venom unabated,
poison spittle
distorting the crops
we consume:
hell, it’s in our clothing!
Endgame?
Dissolution of the collective
dream.
R James Sennett Jr
R James Sennett Jr lives, works, breathes, and chases his muse in Louisville, Kentucky. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications for which he is grateful.
April 2026 | poetry
Polynomial
Lines as points that flow
from the first to last,
planes as groups of lines
that define a surface,
some rippling surface
a topographic map
defined by rippling lines
also to mean mountains
but they move too fast
to define a moving figure
a human figure computed
in its sudden contortions
on a flatscreen of colors
limbs that part from bodies
or melt back into the torso
from which they came
or part like distended ribs–
it’s all just lines distorted,
flowing points composing lines,
points that move on a plane
crossing boundaries of others
nota bene the wrestling harlequins
as they melt into another
in the prize ring.
Scott Penney
Recent publications have been in Artful Dodge, basalt, Faultline, Fugue, Chiron Review, and other magazines. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently, he lives in Chelsea, Vermont.
