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
July 2022 | poetry
If I tell my mother she is the sky,
what I really mean is that I’m the pond
my father built her. What I mean is
I watch the way she rises and sets
in herself. I mirror every cloud
that mars her features. I darken
to match her windy movements.
What I’m saying is my surface
catches her light, but when she
grows overcast with gray,
my entire face disappears.
I’m saying the two of us
are always facing each other
and wincing away at the same
time. I’ve absorbed into myself
every color she’s taught me
When I try to reveal my
drowned leaves to her,
she can’t see through
her own reflection.
What I’m trying to say is
I can’t stop taking
her shape.
Racine Watson
Racine Watson is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she studied Creative Writing within the UNO’s Writer’s Workshop. Her work includes fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Her creative-nonfiction essay, “The Five Ways I Left” is forthcoming in the 13th Floor literary journal, 2022 edition.
July 2022 | poetry
I walk over train ties
searching for drops of water,
like the rains I’ve loved, negotiating
tumbleweeds where the train runs
regardless of how many rocks lie on the ties.
Farms, silos, industry with steam rising
from the table of land, I watch passively
as workers drain a swamp, plant rice,
and fill it again.
Scale of the wounds
call it forgiveness
call it dread
this pilgrimage.
Call it jasmine.
Call it an address.
Open space, even dry trees
at the mountain’s base–
they too suffer their own mirror.
Call it eyelashes, moist
with their own nick names.
Plumes of smoke make their own
weather in the shape of
a cross or is it a figure
with head and arms
or a rocket
raising itself above the cloud shelf.
Laurel Benjamin
Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, One Art, Ekphrastic Review, Wordpeace, The Thieving Magpie, Black Fox, Hare’s Paw, California Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review. Find her blog at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com. Find her at Twitter at @lbencleo. Find her on Instragram at cleobenjami.
July 2022 | poetry
submerged and unseen
in an archaic well –
women thought dirty
by men of G-d
in an archaic well,
with bodies purified
by men of G-d,
ensnaring the fecund
with bodies purified,
my sisters were bait
ensnaring the fecund
in their water ringed curls
my sisters were bait,
fertile and sullen –
in their water ringed curls
hid the birth of the world
fertile and sullen,
women thought dirty
hid the birth of the world –
submerged and unseen
Lisa Delan
Lisa Delan is classical soprano specializing in American Art Song; performing, recording, and commissioning musical settings of an expansive range of poetry. She has recorded extensively for the Pentatone label and can be heard on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. Her own poetry appears in American Writers Review (San Fedele Press 2022), Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Drunk Monkeys, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Mill Valley Literary Review, Poets Choice, The Pointed Circle, Tangled Locks, Viewless Wings, and Wingless Dreamer.
April 2022 | poetry
After Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey
The home we knew is only memory. It repeats
without variation. We are forever young—
forever children playing in the yard: giggling, kicking stones,
chasing guineafowl, taking too long to answer mother’s call.
Mother is so much older now or in her grave, though
in the home inside you, she is always young and lovely—
dark skin glistening in the midday sun as she simmers
peanut stew and the spice-heavy aroma is carried
on the wind even across the ocean. If you take a deep breath,
Angela, you can taste the meal she prepared the last day you saw her.
Ellen June Wright
Ellen June Wright was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She taught high-school language arts in New Jersey for three decades before retiring. She has consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week in June 2021, and she received five 2021 Pushcart Prize nominations.
April 2022 | poetry
Leave behind
fugitive clothing, rags that stink of evasion,
irreconcilable anguish,
unacknowledged fissures,
time sliced by nostalgia into frames.
Be close to the edge to know your wound your love,
your end to abide, but not in complaisance.
Do not forget to leave your handprint on a wall.
These are the conditions of possibility.
Lynn Staley
Lynn Staley is a Professor of English at Colgate University, where she teaches and writes about medieval and early modern literature and culture. However, she is also a poet and has been for many years. Her poems are representative of her awareness of place (a remnant of a Kentucky upbringing), of the intersections of the ordinary and extraordinary, and of her interest in the submerged narrative. Several years ago a poetry manuscript was short-listed for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize given by Kent State University Press. She has published in the Seneca Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Psaltery and Lyre.
