2020 Best of the Net Nominations – Nightingale & Sparrow

Nightingale & Sparrow is excited to announce our nominations for this year’s Best of the Net anthology!

Because our print and digital issues are published simultaneously, our quarterly issues aren’t eligible for this opportunity. However, as online exclusives, our micropoem selections are!

And so, without further ado, we present our Best of the Net nominations, in no particular order:

Groove – Tanasha Martin

I’m coiled vinyl, find my groove Your needle drops Pierces my heart The stylus skips On velvet lips Dazed in the spin That finds no end Pierces my heart Your needle drops I’m smooth vinyl, found my groove

Vs. – Amanda Crum

Under skies colored gunmetal and nectarine you lifted your hand palm up to show what gentleness lived there and I who had been cracked in the world’s fist found sweet sanctuary

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – Miriam Hilmi

Inflamed brain ebbing at the shores of sanity; myalgic encephalomyelitis. They enter my sanctuary a cacophony of relentless noise oscillating through my spine seeping into every nerve, unravelling into a furnace of sensation.

To Grill American Antichuchos – Jesus Garay

My heart is in pieces soaked from the sweat I come from, willingly placed on the grill I’ve known as a child - cured by the sun that sears it whole.

Carrion – Ellora Sutton

The crows were claiming their eyes, their silver coins, their scythes mining for the good stuff. Their wings beat a polyphony, dies irae, and you, in the maw of the night, pointing to the sky saying look at all those angels.

Marsvindur – Carolyn Agee

Wolves claw the door, boreal fangs stained bloodless blue. Watch. Watch. Through paned windows. Mark corporeality swathed in snow soft as steel.