< Back to Breakthroughs Issue let's say Maureen Clark there is not a happy ending here the man stuck upside down in the cave will die what then? you will keep living more empty days you’ve begged before and no one came to save you there was no stretcher hauled out with a body breathing but broken mud and dirt worth the life how do you walk away without the rescue live the rest of your life with the always lost In trying to find new ways to deal with difficult subjects, I wrote in the Italian Rispetto form: eight lines, eleven syllables in each line. I like the way a very complex idea fits into this container, like a bento box. "let's say" was published in Sonic Boom . Previous MAUREEN CLARK is the author of the poetry collection This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024 ) and has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir, Falling into Bountiful: Confessions of a Once Upon a Time Mormon , is forthcoming from Hypatia Press. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The City Has Changed Mona Mehas the city where I grew up has changed for the better I don’t remember coffee shops where poets read their work or parks with gazebos where drummers taught children I recall empty storefronts and homeless people on park benches the nicer parts of town were hidden or possibly off limits growing up poor produced a mindset difficult to leave behind the place has had an upgrade but I’ve moved away I visit friends from childhood my hometown seems foreign turn back time to the days of my youth I want the new town an area rich in culture and art music flowing from shop doors I want to grow up there in that improved city perhaps then I would change for the better "The City Has Changed" is a poem about the breakthrough experiences that made me see my hometown in a different light. For a while, I refused to believe it but after more time, I finally opened my eyes. Previous MONA MEHAS , a Pushcart Prize nominee, writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Resistance and Resilience--Redacted (LJMcD Communications, 2026) . Mona has also written two science fantasy novels and is President of the Poetry Society of Indiana, as well as the Indiana co-Leader of Authors Against Book Bans. monamehas.net Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The Garden You Made Maureen Clark we planted our oak tree saplings on the same day our husbands raced their carts to the garden center check-out they grew even when we were no longer speaking and were still growing when we mended we always knew they would outlive us our little lives short by comparison to their ringed calendars I would not be surprised if they met on moonless nights to gossip about us our human foibles and I wonder if our oak tree sends messages of condolence to yours now that both of you are dead and the garden you made is gone In "The Garden You Made," the breakthrough I had was the ability to write in a more minimal style, leaving out much of the detail to get to the emotional truth of the poem. Previous MAUREEN CLARK is the author of the poetry collection This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024 ) and has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir, Falling into Bountiful: Confessions of a Once Upon a Time Mormon , is forthcoming from Hypatia Press. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The Curse of Seventy-Eight Mona Mehas My sister just turned seventy-nine; I called on her birthday, said congrats. “I broke the curse!” she said, “Damn the stats!” I’m afraid to take this as a sign. Sperm-donor passed at seventy-eight; my sister just turned seventy-nine. Sisters called him Dad, with blood aligned— no, his sperm does not a dad equate. At seventy-eight, our mother died; she’d a weak heart and a crooked spine. My sister just turned seventy-nine— I’m growing old, my age amplified. First sister, same age. Was it bloodline? At dinner, unspoken, thinly veiled superstition and fear, now exhaled— my sister just turned seventy-nine. "The Curse of Seventy-Eight, from my book Hand-Me-Downs (LJMcD Communications, 2024) , deals with the day I came to grips with my own mortality. Previous MONA MEHAS , a Pushcart Prize nominee, writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Resistance and Resilience--Redacted (LJMcD Communications, 2026) . Mona has also written two science fantasy novels and is President of the Poetry Society of Indiana, as well as the Indiana co-Leader of Authors Against Book Bans. monamehas.net Next

Star Coulbrooke < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Red Camaro Star Coulbrooke 00:00 / 02:47 Red Camaro Star Coulbrooke Monday, September 1st, 1997. I’ve had this Camaro ten years to the day. Got it when I was thirty-six, in the prime of my life. Red Camaro Sport Coupe with a story. Today I’m selling it to my neighbor for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday. The daughter, pouty smile, dark curly hair, bare feet, and a wild reputation came over for a test drive Friday night. Said, when she came back after fifteen minutes, My dad told me if I liked it I could have it. I really like it. I’ve liked it too. I’ve loved that red Camaro. Loved it and depended on it, bought it from a friend, used it for my job selling insurance and investments. That car was the wild card I drew when my husband, who had a couple of lucid months toward the end of our 23 ½-year marriage, my husband who was feeling magnanimous said, Why don’t we refinance the house and buy you a car? You choose the one. My husband, chastened by his last few escapades against the doctrine of marriage and continuing in a rare stretch of generosity, did not complain when I added to the mortgage loan our daughter’s wedding and a full set of furniture for our recently-finished basement. By the time his mood swung back to surly, I’d made my plan of escape. The title was in my name. I had the keys. I stepped on the gas pedal and raced right out of my old life. Kept the new furniture. Found an apartment I couldn’t keep—couldn’t pay rent and utilities working part-time and going back to school—so I gave the furniture to the married daughter who sold it when she ran into hard times. Now I’m selling the red Camaro, my symbol of freedom. It’s a blood-letting. I’m weak and shaky with anticipation. That wild young neighbor girl will drive it to school and boys will chase her and she’ll get in trouble. But it will give her new freedom, that car, and maybe it will give her life new meaning. Yes, this is the way I’ll imagine it all. The men in her life will find they don’t own her. Just like I did, she’ll escape in that declaration of red Camaro, that symbol of wildness and freedom, that independent woman’s car. When Covid hit in March 2020, I retired from my job at Utah State University, helped my husband build an addition on our house, and took care of him until he died from cancer in June 2023. I thought I had lost my ability to write poetry. But I turned to memoir writing and started mining pieces from my old journals. They have turned into prose poem memoirs, a new style for me, a real breakthrough. Previous STAR COULBROOKE was the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Logan City, Utah, and is founder/coordinator of the Helicon West Reading Series. Her poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory, Both Sides from the Middle , and City of Poetry. mappingliteraryutah.org/utah-writers/star-coulbrooke Next

Star Coulbrooke < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Aerobics by God Star Coulbrooke 00:00 / 02:10 Aerobics by God Star Coulbrooke It was a class for women only, women in the same church honing their bodies for husbands who told them God said it was good to be fit, and ever since birth control, women could be. So every Tuesday morning they followed a church-approved leader through ladylike routines in new leotards and ballet shoes, embarrassed at the sight of butts and legs they’d never seen before, their shapes always having been covered in Sunday pleats and gathers. Gradually, as confidence crept in with dance steps mastered to such easy routine they could have walked it in their sleep, their thoughts began to wander, endorphins they hadn’t owned since puberty pushing them into loving their muscles, liking their new form–such energy! A few of the ladies quit, went off to the fitness center in town and started working out with weights. They bought cross-training shoes, aerobics and lifting on alternate days. Made excuses for not going out with the family on weekends, went running on Saturdays, hot-tubbing Sunday. They were looking sharp, feeling like they could conquer the world. One ran for public office, two divorced. I burned up a new pair of shoes every six months, got so tight and sinewy I stopped my cycle, no more monthly bleeding, just energy, energy and power. I could carry six bags of groceries to the car myself, no cart, no sweat. I could stay up until midnight baking, doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom. I’d fall into bed, sleep hard until five, get up and go like hell. One day my man voiced his usual complaints and I decked him. All from a church-ladies gentle aerobics class ordered by God. "Aerobics by God" was published in Both Sides from the Middle (Helicon West Press, 2018), Perspective s, Center for Women and Gender online magazine, Utah State University, and Logan Canyon Blend, Blue Scarab Press, Pocatello, Idaho. The breakthrough that made this one a classic to perform was the realization that I could stretch the facts in my poems to get at the truth as well as the humor of a situation. Writing the poem in this style was empowering for me, a divorced woman going back to school in my forties, especially when my mentor, the late Ken Brewer, former poet laureate of Utah, got such a kick out of reading this poem to audiences across Utah. Previous STAR COULBROOKE was the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Logan City, Utah, and is founder/coordinator of the Helicon West Reading Series. Her poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory, Both Sides from the Middle , and City of Poetry. mappingliteraryutah.org/utah-writers/star-coulbrooke Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Nevah Bettah Paula Harrington Not long after my mother died, my father bought himself a Panama hat. That might not seem like much of a sign. But he was a lifelong New Englander—a Bostonian, no less—and his usual headgear was an Irish tweed wool cap. So as soon as I saw his new straw affair, I knew it meant something. But what could that be, beyond the life-altering fact of my mother’s death? We were standing by the old electric stove in the kitchen, and he’d just put the kettle on to make himself “a cuppa.” No one else was up yet. He gave me that sidelong look of his and said—suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him—“Wait here a minute, Peach. I’ve got something to show you.” And off he walked to the back-hall closet. I watched him reach behind the woolens my family had kept jammed together on the top shelf for decades—mittens, gloves, scarves, caps—and take out a cardboard box. He brought it back into the kitchen, opened it on the counter, and put the Panama hat on his bald head. “Whad’ya think?” he asked. Well, all I could actually think at that moment was, where the hell did he find it? (This was back when nobody ordered online.) In Boston. In the dead of February. With snow blocking the front door. But find it, he had. Even at 76, Dad was a resourceful guy. “Lookin’ good,” I said, our family joke about appearance. “Thinking of taking a trip? “I’ll keep you posted,” he said, and proceeded to make his tea. Milk, two sugars. With his hat still on. The next morning found us near the same spot. Kettle going again. Panama hat put away. I’d woken up thinking I should say something about it, though. Try to find out more, make sure he was okay. He was standing at the sink, gazing out a window that looked down over a row of backyards receding in a slow slope to the Fore River and beyond that to the Boston skyline. It was a typical dreary February day, almost comically classic funereal weather. I took the leap, venturing to speak for my siblings as well as myself. “Dad, about the hat. About anything you do, really. Now that Mum is gone. We want you to know that whatever you do is fine with us. You did a great job taking care of her the whole time she was ill. So don’t worry about us. And, judging by how long Gramma lived, you could have fifteen more good years.” “You could be right.” He turned and looked at me with eyes that were still lively. “ I might live just about that long. If my luck holds.” And that was it, as far as this daughter and father could go in acknowledging all they had been through. The next day I flew back to California, where I’d been living for many years. It didn’t take long to learn where Dad was headed in his Panama hat. He was coming to see me. Well, not exactly. I was also his cover story. A week after I returned to California, he was on the phone. Which in itself showed we were in new territory; my mother had always been the one to call, with him pitching in a few words at the end. “How’s ya doin’, Peach?” “Good, Dad. You?” “Nevah bettah.” I laughed. He was back to his old jokes. And he had an announcement. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I’d like to take the train across the country. Never done that.” “Wow, Dad. Sounds like fun. Have you looked into it?” “I’m going to this week.” A week later, he called back, sounding more animated than I’d heard him in years. “Got all the particulars on my trip,” he said. “It’s looking good.” For the first time since I’d moved west two decades before, my father was coming to visit. It took him a few months to do it. Not due to second thoughts, though, just winter weather. In the meantime, he called me with updates. “I bought a ticket with an open date.” “Don’t think I’ll bother with a sleeper. It’s just three days and I can recline the seat all the way back.” “I have to change trains only once, in Chicago.” “I’m taking just one bag.” “The train’s delayed. Too much snow in the Rockies.” “I’m looking at late April.” Then one day he called and said, “I arrive on May 6th.” I scoured the platform for the clean-shaven father I'd known my whole life. When I didn’t see him, I started to worry. Could he have missed his transfer in Chicago? Not a chance. A man about Dad’s age and size was standing a few yards off; his hat gave him away. What fooled me at first were his mustache and goatee. “How d’ya like my new look? Somebody told me it’s called a Fu Manchu, but I think it’s a Van Dyke.” I was speechless for a couple of seconds but recovered quickly, as was our family practice. “Lookin’ good, Dad. But what I really like is your Panama hat.” He turned his head from side to side to give me the full effect: wide brim, blue band, jaunty tilt. You couldn’t miss the statement it was making. “Meet the new me, Peach.” “Yup,” I grinned. “I knew he was in there. Welcome to California.” As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person the new Dad was coming to see. My mother had a sister-in-law named Mary, who had married her brother Dan soon after he came home from World War II. Mum once told me he’d never been the same afterward. “His body was in one piece but his spirit was in bits,” she said. Still, he went on to meet and marry Mary, who’d become good friends with my mother during their wartime jobs as secretaries. Soon after that, my uncle and aunt struck out for Southern California, where they raised four children, cousins we barely knew when we were growing up back in Boston. Many years later, I too was living in California and had just gotten married myself. Uncle Dan’s health had deteriorated—apparently he drank a lot in his post-war years—and they moved in with their oldest son, who at that point lived about an hour from me. Then my uncle died. Soon Mary started flying back with me to see her old friend, my mother, who had become gravely ill herself. And on my final visit home before Mum’s death—the one that ended with her funeral and Dad’s new Panama hat—Mary was the only other person in our house besides our immediate family. She slept upstairs in a small bedroom that had once been my parents’. (Mum was sleeping by then in a hospital bed in the dining room, which we’d converted into a home hospice.) After my mother died, Mary stayed on with Dad for a couple of weeks. To keep him company, so my siblings and I could all return to our lives. She was a comfort to all of us. You can probably guess where all this is heading. Dad had traveled across the country not just to take the train trip or to visit me, the only one of his four kids who didn’t live in New England. He’d also come to see Mary. To find out if they might have a future together. True, she was nothing like Mum in most ways. She wasn’t as funny or as fierce. Not as smart or intellectual either. And she hadn’t been a redhead with freckles all over. But wasn’t that a good thing? Because who could compete with all that? Luckily, Mary had no urge even to try. She too had loved our mother and, besides, she was clearly her own person. Her way was to appreciate the humor and fierceness in others. She’d been a dark brunette with bright blue eyes, and proud of it. But she did share one important trait with Mum: Mary was just as kind. So it was that, a few days after Dad arrived, he and I drove down to see Mary at my cousin’s. Then we scooped her up—that’s how I always think of it: scooping her up, like a delightful child—and took her off with us. I recall the rest of that trip as if the three of us were traveling in some charmed bubble, a string of enchanted days that ran together with the soft beauty of a watercolor scene. I drove them all around the Bay Area, from Half Moon Bay to Richmond. Showed them places I’d lived over the years, Pacific beach cottages and Berkeley brown shingles. From fish shack to bridge lookout point we went, from a lighthouse hostel to a restaurant that had once been a brothel. And everywhere we stopped, Mary would give Dad and me the sweetest of smiles. “Oh,” she’d say. “This is so lovely. Thank you for taking me here.” I chuckled to myself, trying to imagine my mother in a state of such simple wonder. At Point Montara, I turned around to say something and caught sight of them holding hands. For about a year after that, they went back and forth from Boston to the Bay Area. My siblings and I knew what was happening but pretended not to. “Let them tell us in their own time,” one of my sisters said. Finally, when I was home for one of my visits—so strange now without my mother there—Dad called us all into the living room. Mary sat beside him on the old plush sofa, bolstered by pillows a neighbor friend had crocheted too many years ago to count. “We have something to tell you.” My siblings and I couldn’t look at each other for fear of grinning. “Mary and I have decided to live together, and we’d like your approval.” Then we told them how pleased – but not surprised – we were. Of course they had our “approval.” After that, the fabric of our family became seamless. Their lives—and now ours—flowed into each other's back and forth across decades. Mary told us stories about who our mother had been before any of us, including Dad, knew her. How Mum got a kick out of correcting boys in her class when they were wrong. How she’d taken a shy Mary under her wing at work, warning her to be careful of their bosses getting “handy.” How she’d fallen in love with a young Jewish man and been heartbroken when both families forbade a “religious intermarriage.” Our favorite story, of course, was the one about how our parents met. No surprise that Mary had been there. It happened at a USO dance at the Monhegan Hotel in New London, Connecticut. Dad was doing some training across the Thames River at the Groton Naval Base – he would go on to serve in the Merchant Marines in World War II – and our mother was working, along with Mary, in nearby Harford. Still sad about her ex-boyfriend, Mum didn’t want to go, but she was the only one with a car. So, in her kind way, she drove Mary and a couple of other girlfriends to the dance. As our mother always told it, Dad, who had a full head of black curls in those days, asked her to dance. The first thing she said to him was, “Who does your hair?” She still thought that was funny, forty years into their marriage. Mary, however, had a different version of the story. In hers, our mother had been taken by our father, a charming seaman, from the start. “I danced past once and saw her sitting at a table talking with him. Then I was amazed to see her still there the second time I went by. And the third. Your mother didn’t talk to just any guy, you know.” We didn’t, but we could imagine. Dad and Mary got married in the living room of my old house in Maine, where my husband, two kids, and I had moved a few years earlier. The pull of my family, the four seasons, and the Atlantic Ocean finally proved too strong. He was 86 when they made it official; she was 84. They stood before the mantle in our high-ceilinged living room with its leaded glass windows, my siblings and our spouses surrounding them. Mary wore a blue dress to match her eyes; Dad was in an Irish fisherman knit sweater. Our neighbor, an online minister, came over to do the honors. Then we all toasted them with champagne. “Welcome to the Harrington family,” my brother laughed. I remember that at one point, Mary leaned over and whispered to me. “I know your mother is looking down and smiling.” I can’t say I shared that belief. But I did know one thing. Mary wasn't only making our father happy, she was keeping our mother present in our lives. In the end, Dad and I had called it about right—he lived to be almost 91. So he and Mary did have nearly fifteen good years together. And, unlike my mother and uncle, both died quickly. Neither lingered or diminished into a different person from the one they’d once been. I was in the room at the hospital when Mary passed. Dad, of course, was there too. He held her hand in one of his own and gripped mine with his other. He kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, my girl.” Dad died a year later but I couldn’t be there. I was living in Paris with my family on a research grant, which had made him immensely proud. He’d fallen and broken a hip, and he chose not to undergo surgery and what would be a grueling, uncertain recovery. Instead, with his doctor’s agreement, he refused treatment and nourishment. Dad said his goodbyes on the phone to my husband and both of our now teenaged kids. Then they handed it to me. “I don’t want you to feel bad, Peach. This is what I want. I’ve had a good run.” Not even an hour later, my sister called back. “He’s gone.” I went and sat on the sofa in my Paris apartment. Let tears run down into the smile that was also on my face. I thought of him in his Panama hat on the train platform all those years before, how he’d kept moving when so many other people would have stayed put. I carry that image like a talisman. Because, as he might say, ya nevah know . A kind of companion piece to “The Dying Room,” "Nevah Bettah" tells the story of my father’s final chapter after my mother’s death, and my unexpectedly happy role in it. If her dying taught me to let go with love, his life afterward showed me the wisdom in moving forward. So my breakthrough came through his example: simply put, stay open and keep going. Previous PAULA HARRINGTON is a Maine writer and the former director of the Farnham Writers' Center at Colby College, where she also taught writing and literature. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris and is the author, with Ronald Jenn, of Mark Twain & France (University of Missouri, 2017). Her essays have appeared in Grande Dame Literary , Colby Magazine , and the Mark Twain Annual . Before entering academia, she was a newspaper reporter and columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The Dying Room Paula Harrington Our father was seventy-six when our mother died. For almost three years, he’d been taking care of her while her health failed and her mood plummeted. She morphed from a fun-loving, kind, irreverent redhead into a cranky, frightened, white-haired old woman. The whole time, Dad somehow managed to remain solicitous of her. He loved to cook, so he would make her tasty little treats. A pioneer in the kitchen, he was hip to small plates long before most Americans knew they existed. His real agenda, though, was to get our mother to eat something. Anything. Her illness had made her lose her appetite, so whatever he cooked—no matter how tempting — she’d turn her nose up at it. He’d bring her a ramekin of ratatouille, say, with a flaky fresh biscuit on the side. Or a half-serving of baked stuffed scrod with two spears of steamed asparagus and a dab of lemon aioli. Maybe a few spoonfuls of his trademark pea soup flavored by a hefty hambone. “Here, Peg, try this,” he’d say, as if she were his taster and he was seeking her professional opinion. She would take it politely and thank him. But we all knew she didn’t mean it. What she really wanted to do was throw the food to the floor and never touch any of it again. But as furious as she was about getting sick and enfeebled, she did her best to fake it. She’d scrunch up her face, take a careful nibble, then concoct some excuse for putting the food aside. “Mmm,” she’d say. “Very good, Kev. Maybe just a little too salty.” Or “Oh, scrod. Wonderful. Did you remember to put dried parsley in the breading?” So Dad realized he had lost the woman he loved—the “real Peg”—well before she died. And we all knew we had lost our beloved mother. The day she finally left us for good, we dressed her in a coral-colored nightgown and matching robe. She lay all afternoon and into the evening in a hospital bed we’d set up downstairs while friends came and went to say goodbye. One brought her yellow roses, another rubbed sweet-smelling cream on her hands. She was already in a morphine fugue, though, only letting out the occasional noise that sounded like a cross between a mumble, chuckle, and growl. I guess you could say we gave her an old-fashioned Irish wake while she was technically still alive. After night fell, our brother came over with his guitar from his home nearby. Then he, my two sisters, and I sang Mum out. Our last song, I remember, was “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. There is a road, no simple highway Between the dawn and the dark of night And if you go, no one may follow That path is for your steps alone. Like a child again, I cried to myself, No, Mum, no! Don’t find that highway. But, of course, she already had. When she breathed her last, Dad was upstairs in their bedroom of forty years. We had encouraged him to get some rest, but the truth is I don’t think he wanted to be there when Mum actually passed. My brother didn’t either; he went home around 2 a.m. I understand how they felt. If you’d told me I could have been in the same room when my mother died, I would have said, impossible . Now I am glad I was there; it seemed only fair. She brought me into the world and I helped send her out. I found a poignant symmetry in that. So, in the end, only my sisters and I were present. Just the women of our family, which also seemed about right. For all our adult lives, the four of us had stayed up together whenever I, the family wanderer, came home to visit. My sisters would drive down from their homes in New Hampshire and Maine, and we would chat away with Mum about our lives, family friends, politics, books, and world events until we fell asleep in place. On the sofa, in the arm chairs, sprawled on the rug, flopping against each other, sharing sofa throws and pillows for bedding. That last night of her life, it felt only natural for us to lie down on the floor around her bed. We looked at each other and knew what to do. “The party’s over, Mum,” one of my sisters said. “We’re shutting our eyes and going to sleep.” Then we stayed still and quiet until, minutes later, we heard her death rattle. “The dining room has become the dying room,” my other sister whispered. Then we got up from the floor, linked arms, and went to tell Dad. "The Dying Room" first appeared in Grande Dame Literary Journal . It tells the story of my family's coming together for an old-fashioned Irish wake for my mother while she was technically still alive. My personal breakthrough was that I could be present in the room when she actually died because "she brought me into the world and I was helping to bring her out. I found a poignant symmetry in that." Previous PAULA HARRINGTON is a Maine writer and the former director of the Farnham Writers' Center at Colby College, where she also taught writing and literature. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris and is the author, with Ronald Jenn, of Mark Twain & France (University of Missouri, 2017). Her essays have appeared in Grande Dame Literary , Colby Magazine , and the Mark Twain Annual . Before entering academia, she was a newspaper reporter and columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Street Imagination Stephen Ruffus Night is a hood after a day’s exile stepping over broken glass. I scratch fractured stories on brick walls, sidewalks, the underpass for pigeons to sing to. They are all that I am, my only letters to the world. A library is a good place for hiding. You can tear pictures from art books of the famous paintings far across the East River tape them onto your bedroom wall and feel like you’re something. Make a few holes in your t-shirt before someone does it for you. Scuff up your brand new PF Flyers and deny all others the pleasure. At the corner store buy a Mission orange soda. No one will steal a swig. I’ll spit in the bottle first. Here you keep what is yours by corrupting it. First published in Hotel Amerika. In "Street Imagination," I describe the loneliness and vulnerability I felt as an adolescent growing up in a New York City neighborhood, and the small ways I challenged its threats and asserted my own identity to survive. Previous STEPHEN RUFFUS is the author of a chapbook, In Lieu Of (Elk Press, 2024) His work has appeared in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, 3rd Wednesday, the American Journal of Poetry, The Shore, Poetica Review, JMWW, Emerge Literary Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly , among others. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his work also received two awards in the Utah Original Writing Competition. Stephen was a founding poetry editor of Quarterly West . Originally from NYC, he still considers himself a New Yorker in many respects, and currently lives in Salt Lake City with his wife. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue On the Second Anniversary of His Passing Stephen Ruffus And so the dream begins in a car speeding across the plains to an end, the sun resting along the horizon. Here he waits to be born on an early morning, the nickel of the moon tacked low in the sky. Suddenly I see his shadow barely lit on an empty street walking slowly in my direction as though from a long absence. Now he is in the hallway in the apartment where I lived. On one end he is the man he was. on the other is the child who favored dreams to bedtime stories I would read him, their words trespassing on the shifting landscape of my sleep. It is the second anniversary of my son's death, and I am dreaming of him as both a child and an adult simultaneously. The images in the poem, particularly the one in which I see him in the hallway of the apartment where I grew up, are meant to reflect my ongoing struggle with his loss and my understanding of who he was. Previous STEPHEN RUFFUS is the author of a chapbook, In Lieu Of (Elk Press, 2024) and the manuscript The Afterlife, which was a finalist for the 2024 Louis Award sponsored by Concrete Wolf Press. His work has appeared in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, 3rd Wednesday, the American Journal of Poetry, The Shore, Poetica Review, JMWW, Emerge Literary Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly , among others. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his work also received two awards in the Utah Original Writing Competition. Stephen was a founding poetry editor of Quarterly West . Originally from NYC, he still considers himself a New Yorker in many respects, and currently lives in Salt Lake City with his wife. Next

Third Issue ................................................................................................................................................................... "BREAKTHROUGHS" - 2025/2026 Poem Approaching Four Past Tenses Lauren Camp Read Sight Lauren Camp Read Double Life Mike White Read Stones Mike White Read boy Jamison Conforto Read Antelope Boy Jamison Conforto Read Chalk-white, Canyon-deep Nano Taggart Read On Selecting the Contents of Care Package Number Three Nano Taggart Read Trigger Alert Robert Okaji Read Relentless Robert Okaji Read Our Big Toes Barbara Huntington Read Shift Barbara Huntington Read A Whispering Beetle Nancy Takacs Read Sweet Peas Nancy Takacs Read Almost Stacy Julin Read Last Meal Stacy Julin Read Ballad of U and Me klipschutz Read Hymn for Lorca klipschutz Read It's Okay Andrea Hollander Read Living Room Andrea Hollander Read Blood Draw Karin Anderson Read Yes, Emily, Hope Jan Mordenski Read How to Make a Basket Jan Mordenski Read Crash Ruminations (excerpt) Karin Anderson Read Incunabula, Mother Tongue Max McDonough Read One Small Change Max McDonough Read facing it Shanan Ballam Read The Long Haul Shanan Ballam Read An Amicable Correspondence Scott Abbott Read I Saw Her Standing There Scott Abbott Read Cold Marble, Hot Memories Lev Raphael Read Hard Times Lev Raphael Read Bird News Cynthia Hardy Read Rude Weather Cynthia Hardy Read Ghazal with Coyotes, Gaza and Healing Herbs Pamela Uschuk Read Bluebird Abecedarian Pamela Uschuk Read Review of El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez Willy Palomo Read Mama's Hands Willy Palomo Read Vocabulary Robbie Gamble Read Gamble Patrilineage Robbie Gamble Read West on Piccadilly Shauri Cherie Read huntington beach, march 2 Shauri Cherie Read The Birdwatcher Stephen Wunderli Read Angel's Diner Stephen Wunderli Read How to Turn a Hate March into a Jubilee Procession Dana Henry Martin Read Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley Dana Henry Martin Read The Whiz Kid Beth Colburn Orozco Read Dear Carley Beth Colburn Orozco Read Imagined Scenes Mary Behan Read Stargazing Mary Behan Read BACK TO TOP

Fourth Issue ................................................................................................................................................................... "BREAKTHROUGHS" - 2025/2026 River Dog and the Shadow Man, a story Michael Henson Read Dead Man's Money Michael Henson Read Frank's Buick David G. Pace Read The Little House We Dance In David G. Pace Read Still Life with Fly Shawn Stradley Read Painting the Cave Shawn Stradley Read Awkward David Romanda Read Hairbrush David Romanda Read At the End of October Dennise Gackstetter Read Reconsidering god Dennise Gackstetter Read On the Second Anniversary of His Passing Stephen Ruffus Read Street Imagination Stephen Ruffus Read Just So You Know Carol Coven Grannick Read When He Had to Travel Carol Coven Grannick Read The Awful Thing Christina Robertson Read Exhaling Carefully Christina Robertson Read BACK TO TOP