Best of the Net 2013  



2013 FINALISTS


FICTION

Andrew Dutton's "Mesa" from Ardor
Heather E. Goodman's "Good, Gone" from Flyway Journal of Writing & Environment
Stephen Graham Jones's "Easy Money" from Menacing Hedge
Jennifer Luckenbill's "Roar (a trio of shorts)" from Black Heart Magazine
Saeide Mirzaei's "The Joy of Peeling" from Spry Literary Journal
C.D. Rose's "Don DeLillo" from Liar's League NYC
Megan Staffel's "Saturday at the Philharmonic" from Four Way Review
Elizabeth Weld's "Patience" from Blackbird


NONFICTION

J. David Bell's "Watershed" from Kudzu
Tatyana Brown's "Your Invitation to the Wake: For Alexandra Petri, After Her Article, 'Is Poetry Dead?'" from Radius
Sara Finnerty's "Corrections" from Burrow Press Review
Jean Macpherson's "Crying, my little one, footsore and weary" from Radius
Josie Scanlan's "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation" from Lunch Ticket
Sean Finucane Toner's "Special Needs" from Ardor
Keema Waterfield's "Landscaping" from Pithead Chapel

POETRY

Tory Adkisson's "Self-Portrait as Incubus" from Guernica Magazine
Rachel Andoga's "Supporting the War Effort" from Coal Hill Review
Laurie Barton's "The End of Times Café" from Lunch Ticket Magazine
C. Dylan Bassett's "Husserl's Theoretical Horizon, or a Ghost is a House You Live In" from Memorious
Allie Marini Batts's "Skydive" from Blue Hour
F.J. Bergmann's "What Not to Say to an Alien" from Eye To The Telescope
Lucy Biederman's "From Here" from Sixth Finch
David Blair's "Revere Beach in Spring" from InDigest Magazine
Bruce Bond's "Via Negativa" from Conte
Josh Booton's "Brief Memory Carrying a Twig in its Beak" from Cellpoems
Betsy Brown's "The Oxford Hotel" from Crack the Spine Literary Magazine
Tovah Burstein's "Poem with Regrets" from Ghost Ocean Magazine
Mary Lou Buschi's "Scouts" from Swarm
Sara Biggs Chaney's "Badminton" from Poppy Road Review
Alicia Cole's "Roadside, US 64" from Eclectica
Ryan Collins's "[You are not as handsome as your mother]" from Transom Journal
Jacob Collins-Wilson's "Postcards" from Crack the Spine Literary Magazine
Logen Cure's "To Shed" from Sundog Lit
Jim Daniels's "Last Meals" from Ducts.org
Grigori Dashevsky, trans. by Valzhyna Mort's "Odysseus at Calipso's" from Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art
Holly Day's "Around the Corner" from vox poetica
Kendra Decolo's "I Heart Pussy" from The Collagist
Alex Dimitrov's "Sweet Things" from Cellpoems
Liz Dolan's "A Rising Rugby Star Dies in a Slurry Pit" from ARDOR
Leisha Douglas's "Tentative" from decomP
Safia Elhillo's "what i learned in the fire" from As/Us
Vievee Francis's "Taking It" from Muzzle Magazine
Rodney Gomez's "Feast Day, Farm Road 511" from Ostrich Review
James Allen Hall's "Putting the I Back In" from Vinyl Poetry
Katherine Hollander's "Many Happy Returns" from Spork
Kirsten Holt's "Taxonomy" from Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine
Bryn Homuth's "Bandaging" from Ducts.org
Chloe Honum's "Hours" from Thrush Poetry Journal
Shannon Hozinec's "The Axe-Eaters" from Menacing Hedge
Jessica Jewell's "Ancient Hungarian" from Fjords Review
W. Todd Kaneko's "Macho Man's Last Elbow Drop" from The Collagist
Stephen Lackaye's "Beyond the Hall of Music" from Conte
Rickey Laurentiis's "Epitaph at the Foot of the Stone" from Anti-Poetry
Laura LeHew's "If I Were a Cowgirl" from Cease, Cows
Keith Leonard's "Shadowland" from Pinwheel
Matthew Lippman's "In the Basement of the Holy House" from Blue Lyra Review
Nathan Logan's "Things Really Went to Hell" from Ninth Letter
Eireann Lorsung's "It was true the windows had been painted" from Sundog Lit
Julie Lythcott-Haims's "A Day at the Races" from As/Us
Lisa Mangini's "No One Ever Told Me" from Lunch Ticket Magazine
Sally Wen Mao's "Honey Badger Duet" from Guernica Magazine
Shane McCrae's "Heads" from Petri Press
Karyna McGlynn's "The Afterlife as a Pile of My Lost Vintage Blazers" from Pebble Lake Review
Sean McPherson's "A Half Cord of Wood" from Prick of the Spindle
Jennifer Militello's "Stockholm Syndrome with Death as the Captor" from Anti-Poetry
Michael Mlekoday's "Captain John Brown as Grocery Bagger" from interrupture
Sinéad Morrissey's "Last Winter" from Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art
Irene O'Garden's "Breakers" from The Summerset Review
Darlene Pagán's "This Boy, Here" from Prick of the Spindle
Joanna Pearson's "The Moon Children" from The Baltimore Review
Tim Peeler's "Henry River Poem 9" from drafthorse literary journal
Hai-Dang Phan's "Self Portrait with Streetview" from District Lit
Emilia Phillips's "The Bright Obvious" from iO: A Journal of New American Poetry
Tammy Robacker's "Owen Beach Aubade" from Cascadia Review
Steve Scafidi's "The Gentleman" from Blackbird
Kelly Schirmann's "hunger gatherer" from decomP
Judith Skillman's "Starlings" from Cascadia Review
Karen Skolfield's "Homunculus" from Swarm
Sarah Jordan Stout's "Terra's Lament Upon Leaving New Orleans" from Sleet
Barbara Buckman Strasko's "Graffiti in Braille" from The Summerset Review
Tim Suermondt's "The Star Ferry" from Toasted Cheese
Barbara Louise Ungar's "Kabbalah Barbie" from Atticus Review
Ocean Vuong's "Descent" from Drunken Boat
Karrie Waarala's "Cowboy" from Sundog Lit
Lesley Yalen's "My Love, I Return" from" iO: A Journal of New American Poetry
C. Dale Young's "Human Wishes" from The Collagist



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