< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Stargazing Mary Behan “I’m going outside to look at the stars. Do you want to come? It’s a perfect night for it; it’s still warm and there’s no moon.” Marilyn tried to inject as much enthusiasm into her request as possible, knowing that the invitation to her husband to walk uphill to the meadow behind their house was probably not going to be accepted. Each evening after dinner when he had cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, Kenny settled into his upholstered recliner with a sigh of pleasure and switched on the television. Within a few minutes, the authoritative voice of a male presenter describing a car restoration project would drift into her “lair,” as she liked to call her sewing room. Years earlier when she had been bitten by the quilting bug, Kenny had added a room to their bungalow. It was a bright, sunny space from which she could just see the hilltop meadow, the colors of which, as they changed with the season, gave inspiration to her quilting designs. This room was where she spent most of her evenings, and much of her days since retiring from her job at the local bank. “I’ll pass this time, if you don’t mind,” Kenny said. “There’s a program I’d like to finish watching. Remember, I told you about my ’64 Corvette? The one this guy is working on looks exactly like mine. Same color too.” His audible sigh was followed by, “Boy, I should never have sold it.” Passing through the living room, Marilyn gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek before pulling on a fleece jacket and going outside. Theirs was a happy marriage of nearly forty years. Each of them had been married previously, but as neither had brought children to their union, their love was focused on each other. Kenny gave her hand a gentle squeeze, his fingers lingering for a moment before releasing her. “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she said, but doubted her comment was heard over the sound of the television. Outside, the air had a moist, nutty smell – a harbinger of the approaching Winter. The silhouette of a massive maple tree guided her towards the path. Passing by, she noted that the leaves were devoid of color whereas earlier in the day she had been stunned by their range of hues, from pale yellow to vibrant red. That morning she had watched, enthralled, as dozens of leaves detached themselves in a spontaneous gesture of exhaustion, and drifted to the ground in a blur of color. All through the day she had mused over how she might translate this visual miracle onto a canvas of cloth. The quilt would feature a pile of colorful newly fallen leaves, together with the figure of a child, their arms outstretched in a moment of joyful abandonment. It was an easy climb to the meadow. Cresting the hill, she went a little farther so as to block out any stray light from the house. Here there was a natural dip, deep enough to be sheltered from any breeze, yet shallow enough to see the full panorama of sky. She lay down on the cool ground and deliberately closed her eyes. From previous experience, she knew this would hasten her dark adaptation, and maximize the experience when she opened her eyes and looked up into the sky. It was easy to keep count of the seconds and minutes. For some unexplained reason she was able to hear her heartbeat in her right ear — a steady sixty-four beats per minute. The tinnitus had developed after a routine ear cleaning, but her doctor reassured her it was nothing to worry about and that it would likely go away. But it hadn’t gone away. During the day she could ignore it for the most part, and at night had taken to sleeping on her right side to muffle the sound. Now as she listened, the steady pulsatile thrum dominated the night sounds — the hoot of an owl, a coyote’s howl, some small creature rustling in the grass, the plaintive wail of a train. One hundred beats later, she opened her eyes to view her personal planetarium. A tiny gasp escaped her as she tried to absorb the immensity of the sky. Her eyes first sought out familiar constellations, starting with the Big Dipper and from there following a line to the North Star. Orion with its distinctive belt was just beginning to appear over the edge of her horizon. She recognized Cygnus to the east, a grouping that often eluded her, but this evening did indeed look like a swan. High above, the irregular “W” shape of Cassiopeia came into focus. But it was the Milky Way that held her gaze, sweeping across the arc of the night sky from north to south. It was easy to understand why Native Americans from Chile to Alaska had thought of the Milky Way as a pathway for departed spirits, connecting the earth with the otherworld. Staring at it now, it seemed to engulf her, sucking her into its swirling interior. In the stillness, she listened but could no longer hear the beating of her heart. * * * It takes some time to get used to being dead. For a start, the whole idea of time is different. It’s not linear like in life, but seems to be interrupted, as if you were reading a book and skipped a chapter or two, leaving you struggling to reconnect with the story. The past is irregular too, like watching tiny snippets of black and white movies punctuated by blank sections. There’s no future, or at least I don’t recognize it. Sometimes I feel as if I have been dropped magically into an ongoing stage play, where none of the actors notice my presence. They just continue with their lines, moving through me without missing a beat, and yet I am there on stage with them. I can remember that final evening on top of the hill behind our house, lying on the ground looking up at the Milky Way. I came back to the house and went into the kitchen where a light was still on; the rest of the house was in darkness. Things seemed a little out of place. A book I had left on the counter, planning to return it to the library the following morning was gone, but I guessed Kenny had put it in the car so I wouldn’t forget it. A couple of other things had been moved. But the biggest change was that he had replaced the toaster on the countertop by the sink with a brand-new air-fryer oven. He had talked about getting one for me at Christmas, so this was a lovely early present. In our bedroom I could make out his bulky form under the comforter, but resisted the urge to wake him and tell him how pleased I was. Instead, I lay down on the sofa. I became aware of two voices coming from the direction of the kitchen, neither of which I recognized. When I looked, a young couple was sitting at the table, the remains of a meal around them. He was tall and dark-skinned, and had a pronounced Indian accent. She was short and pretty, her voice carrying the rounded consonants and dragged-out vowels of the Midwest. “Who are you?”, I asked, “and where’s Kenny?” I was irritated by their intrusion and annoyed with Kenny for not letting me know we were going to have guests. They ignored me and continued talking. I walked to the table and stood awkwardly between them, looking from one to the other. Again I asked the question, this time more forcefully. Still they didn’t make any effort to respond, so I grabbed the man’s arm and shook it. “Look here. I’m talking to you. How dare you…” It was then I realized that I couldn’t feel his arm, that my hand made no impression on the sleeve of his shirt. I reached out with my other hand, this time tentatively, and tried to pick up the knife that lay beside his plate. Nothing. I returned to the living room and looked around more carefully. For a moment I thought I had developed cataracts. The room had a washed-out appearance, like you might see in an old photograph — not quite black and white, but what little color there once was had faded. The furniture had been rearranged to face a huge flat screen TV, something Kenny and I had sworn we would never buy. I continued down the corridor to my sewing room. On the large work table where my sewing machine sat, all traces of quilt-making were gone, replaced by a laptop computer and neat stacks of papers and journals. I could still hear their voices in the kitchen as I went through every room in our house, searching for signs of Kenny or me. There were some — pieces of furniture mostly — but any sense that we had lived in this house for almost forty years together was gone. I know it sounds ridiculous, but when I couldn’t find our electric toothbrushes in the bathroom, I glanced in the mirror. It was only then I finally understood: I had died that night under the stars. But why had I come back to my house as a ghost? I asked that question again and again over the next several months. Even though time had little meaning, I knew that months were passing because I could see Mary Anne’s belly getting bigger. The couple now living in our house were Mary Anne and Arjun and she was pregnant with their first child. From conversations I overheard, I gathered they had met while they were at university. Now they were working at two different Biotech companies in the nearby city. It wasn’t as if I deliberately eavesdropped. It was just that when they were in the house, I was aware of them and heard everything they said. It struck me as odd that I could both hear and see, yet I had no ability to feel anything or move an object. Smell and taste were also absent. In life that would have been a hardship, but now I hardly noticed. It was the absence of touch that affected me the most. Time and time again I would reach out to stroke a piece of fabric or put my hand over the stovetop and try to capture its heat . The absence of any sensation was a cruel reminder of my new state . I could still watch clouds drifting across the sky, see pine branches trembling in the wind, or look at birds alighting on the feeder — all things I used to enjoy when I was alive but now gave me little pleasure. What did give me pleasure was hearing Kenny’s name or mine. Little by little I pieced together what happened to me that night. I had a cerebral aneurism that burst, ending my life instantaneously. Even if Kenny had found me, it wouldn’t have made any difference. As it was, he slept soundly through the night, only realizing that I wasn’t beside him in bed when he woke the following morning. He blamed himself for not going with me, choosing instead to watch that television program. But the aneurism could just as easily have burst when I was with him, perhaps when I was driving which would have ended both our lives. I think he might have preferred that outcome, for, according to Mary Anne and Arjun, he was depressed and had lost all interest in life. I might not have been able to feel, in the sense of feeling an object, but even as a ghost I could still feel . Just as with the faded images and scenes, my emotions were also diminished; but they were still there. I still felt love for Kenny, and I missed him deeply — the pleasurable anticipation of seeing him when I walked into the room, a smile lighting up his face when he saw me. I missed basking in his loving gaze, touching his hand, kissing his cheek, being hugged by him. * * * Mary Anne looked up from her computer and stared out the window of her home office. The maple tree that dominated their backyard was at the peak of its Fall colors, she guessed, noticing a few leaves drifting gently to the ground. She decided she would ask Arjun to hang a swing from one of its thick lower branches next year; that is, if they were still living here. For several weeks now, they had been negotiating with Kenny to buy the property. Meanwhile, his nephew had advised him against a direct sale, pointing out that he could get far more money if he listed the house with a realtor. As renters, they would have to leave once a sale was finalized. In her mind’s eye, Mary Anne could see herself swinging back and forth lazily, surrounded by color, while her son played in the circle of leaves beneath the tree. Lost in this vision, she didn’t hear the car on the driveway and was startled when Arjun burst into the room. “He’s going to sell the place to us!” Arjun said, stooping to wrap his arms around his wife. “We don’t have to move.” The relief in his voice was palpable. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “At the price we offered?” “Yeah.” Arjun nodded vigorously. “After all, it’s not as if we’re asking him to fix any of the things the building inspector came up with. Still, I was afraid he might change his mind at the last minute. His nephew has been talking to him again.” “It’s a fair price, and I think he likes the idea of us living here, especially with the baby coming.” Mary Anne moved Arjun’s hand to her belly. “Can you feel him kicking?” Arjun kissed his wife on the lips. “I am the luckiest man alive.” “You are indeed,” she replied, with a laugh. “Actually, we both are. And we’ll never be able to thank your parents enough. I know they have lots of money, but still…” Arjun kissed her again. “They love you, and now that they’re going to have a grandson, they love you even more. Besides, it’s now that we need their money, not in fifty years’ time.” Groaning slightly, Mary Anne got up from the chair. “Tell me about the visit with Kenny. I feel badly not going with you, but the place depresses me. I’m certain the baby feels it too.” She stroked her belly protectively. “It’s alright. I don’t mind going there. I know in the beginning I had an ulterior motive, but over the past few months I’ve come to enjoy our chats. Kenny is an interesting old guy with lots of great stories. Today when I got there, everybody was in the day room, so I asked if I could take him to the conservatory — that glassed-in area off the dining room. It was a little chilly, but at least we had some privacy. We had a good conversation and in the end we shook hands on the deal. He’ll call his lawyer tomorrow and get things rolling. He asked how you were, by the way. I think he likes the idea of a new baby in the house. He and Marilyn never had children; I think his nephew is the only relative he has.” “Did you tell him he can come and visit any time he wants.” “I did of course. But to be honest, he’s so weak, I doubt if he’ll be around much longer. All he talks about now is that he’ll be with Marilyn soon.” “That’s so sad.” Mary Anne made a wry face. Arjun shrugged. “He believes it. I suppose that’s all that really matters.” * * * The thought of my husband spending his final months in a nursing home surrounded by strangers made me sad. I wondered what would happen to him when he died. How would he find me? Up to now I had never encountered another spirit, neither in the house nor in the surrounding farmlands. There was nothing more to learn indoors, so I began to roam the woods and fields around the house, often at night when the absence of light made little difference to my wandering. One night I made my way to the hilltop pasture and the spot where I had died. I lay down in the grass and looked up into the vastness of the universe. The Milky Way was shimmering above me, and as I stared at it, the banner of stars seemed to descend. I raised my hand with fingers outstretched as if to touch one end of this band of light. For a moment I wasn’t sure, but then I felt something. I felt something. Fingers brushed against my hand, then entwined themselves in mine. I brought Kenny’s hand to my lips and kissed it. In this story, the breakthrough is from life to death. An elderly woman dies, and returns to her home as a ghost. She searches for her husband, but new owners have moved in. Her search is eventually rewarded, and the couple is reunited. Previous MARY BEHAN was formerly a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now writes fiction, memoir, and short stories. Her books, published by Laurence Gate Press, include Abbey Girls , a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland; A Measured Thread set in Wisconsin and Ireland, which was named a Top 100 Indie Book, a finalist in the Page Turner Awards, and an eLit medal winner; Kernels , a collection of short stories; and Finding Isobel , a companion to her first novel, was published in 2024 and awarded a gold medal for best adult fiction e-book by the Independent Publishers (IPPI), a silver medal in women’s fiction from Readers Favorite, and Outstanding Literary Fiction Winner in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. mvbehan.com 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 Imagined Scenes Mary Behan Read Stargazing Mary Behan Read BACK TO TOP

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Imagined Scenes Mary Behan Ever since she read about it, riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok had been on Jennifer Fowler’s bucket list. She was fascinated by train travel, and no other rail journey promised such a bigger-than-life experience, chugging across that vast expanse of Asia, where a single color dominated the world map. She imagined a few days in Moscow to buy necessities for the ten-day trip, a final check of her paperwork, and then that electric moment as the train moved slowly out of the station, gaining speed through endless grey suburbs, and finally bursting free into a landscape that stretched for thousands of miles to the Sea of Japan. In her mind’s eye each scene along the way had its own vivid color, smell, and sound. Endless forests and snow-covered steppes punctuated by remote train stations; the curious faces of Russian farmers pausing to stare at the speeding behemoth; the lurching carriage with a samovar steaming quietly in the corner; the smell of sweat and damp wool and urine and garlicky sausages. Excuses came and went. At first it was money—never enough—but as her career progressed, time became the limiting resource. Her Chicago law office was small, and if she took more than two weeks of vacation, someone else would have to attend to her clients. Colleagues were always willing to pick up the slack for a wedding or an illness, but for anything else, they tended to be less generous. And so the Great Railway Bazaar scenes faded gradually as the years went by. This had been a particularly challenging winter for Jennifer. One of the attorneys in her office had slipped on the icy sidewalk early in December and broken both wrists, leaving her unable to work. Much of her caseload had fallen to Jennifer, who had little choice but to work fourteen-hour days, dragging herself home each evening through the grinding cold of a Chicago winter. By the time her colleague returned to the office in mid-February, Jennifer longed for a break from the grinding routine. That afternoon, as her client’s voice continued to drone on in the telephone receiver, she allowed her mind to drift. This was the third phone call with this man in as many days. He was a needy man, she thought; someone who liked the sound of his own voice and didn’t seem to care that every minute of her time came with a price. Absentmindedly, she scrolled through her e-mails. Pausing as one caught her eye, she double-clicked on the link that opened to a brochure for a conference in New Orleans the following month. The topic was only tangentially related to her area of expertise, but it piqued her interest. Her gaze drifted towards the window again. Yesterday’s snow was already melting, merging with the gray of the sidewalks. In the distance the L-train wound its way between buildings, looking for all the world like a model railroad. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of those two images in her brain, but by the end of the phone call she had made a decision. She would go to the conference in New Orleans—by train. * * * The tiny sleeper compartment would have been cramped with two people, but as she was travelling alone, it felt spacious. Two comfortable seats faced each other in front of a large picture window, beneath which hung a folding table. The porter who showed her to her roomette had stowed her suitcase deftly in a corner of the compartment, assuring her that he would take it out later when he prepared the cabin for the night. “My name is Joseph, Ma’am. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. You can press that buzzer or just walk towards the back of the train. You’ll find me for sure.” His broad, toothy smile left her feeling safe. Remembering those erstwhile Trans-Siberian dreams, she had brought a bottle of wine, and as soon as Joseph closed the compartment door, she opened it and poured herself a generous glass. The train lurched briefly, prompting her to grab both glass and bottle, but then it relapsed into a steady movement as it trundled out of Union Station into the Chicago suburbs. A tiny spark of excitement rippled through her. Her desk was clear for the next few days and nobody expected to hear from her. She was free. It was the absence of movement that woke her in the middle of the night. Drawing aside the curtain, harsh lights illuminated a railway yard, and for a moment she wondered whether something had happened. A derailment on the tracks ahead perhaps, or something more ominous? The app on her smartphone showed the train in Memphis, Tennessee, close to the Mississippi River. She listened for any sounds of alarm but the corridor was silent, so she went back to sleep, sliding down between crisp, white sheets and pulling the woolen blanket up to her chin. The next time she woke it was daylight and the view outside had changed dramatically. This was the hidden America—hamlets where trains no longer stopped, settlements that shouted poverty and abandonment. The train moved slowly through this blighted landscape, allowing her to imagine how her life might have been had she grown up here. A dilapidated shack, its wide porch cluttered with sagging chairs, a washing machine, and a stack of empty beer crates was a chastening reminder that not everyone had a chance to live the American Dream. Joseph helped her with her suitcase as she alighted from the train at the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans. She thanked him sincerely, feeling a momentary pang of apprehension at the prospect of leaving his care. She reminded herself that she wasn’t stepping off into a remote Russian city but, rather, a familiar American one. She was a successful lawyer in her mid-thirties, about to attend a conference where she would be respected, if not admired. She straightened her shoulders and walked out of the station into the mid-afternoon sunshine. The unaccustomed feeling of warm air on her skin made her smile. She decided to walk the eight blocks to the boutique hotel in the Warehouse District where she had made a reservation. Signs of post-Katrina recovery were everywhere, although little seemed to have been achieved in the three years since the hurricane. By comparison with Chicago the city felt hostile, and she walked briskly, her roller bag rattling on the uneven pavement. That evening she had an early meal at one of the more exclusive restaurants in the city. It was the sort of place that normally required a reservation, but by going early she hoped they would seat her. She dressed carefully for the occasion, and as she expected, the maître d’hôtel scrutinized her before seating her in a quiet corner of his dining room. Leaving a little over an hour later, she paused at a street corner to watch a scene playing out that could easily have been in a Hollywood movie. Two police cruisers had pulled up behind a battered-looking sedan, their lights flashing. The occupants of the car—two young black men—got out slowly and stood beside their car, waiting. Four white police officers emerged from the cruisers, their bulky gear making the process slow and awkward. One of them approached the two men; the other three stood slightly at a distance, their hands on their guns. The tension was palpable. Jennifer watched in fascination, waiting for someone to make a move—a wrong move. She didn’t notice the woman behind her and was startled when a voice spoke quietly. “Perhaps we should watch from a little farther away. It might be safer. I think we’re in the line of fire here.” Jennifer turned to see a tall, elegantly-dressed woman around her own age with vivid blue eyes and short blond hair parted to the side and slicked down, giving her a vaguely masculine appearance. She was very beautiful. “Maybe you’re right,” Jennifer responded, giving the woman a warm smile. It was true. A stray bullet could easily hit either of them or any of the bystanders who had also stopped. The woman touched her arm gently and led her across the street to a safer vantage point. For the next fifteen minutes they watched the scene play out, exchanging comments as to what might be going on and speculating as to how it might resolve. Suddenly, as if on cue, all six men got into their cars and drove away, the cruisers turning left and the sedan continuing on straight past the two women. The crowd of onlookers began to disperse, but the two women lingered and continued their conversation, which by now had progressed to the rehabilitation efforts that were being undertaken in the Warehouse District. Jennifer was about to say goodbye when the woman said, “I have an apartment just around the corner. Would you like to come up for a glass of wine? We have a lovely rooftop garden; you can see the boats on the river.” She tilted her head to one side and looked inquiringly at Jennifer, the side of her mouth turning up slightly with the hint of a smile. There was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself earlier. Veva Kiuru.” She extended her hand and Jennifer shook it, offering her own name in exchange. The name sounds vaguely Polish, Jennifer thought, yet this woman didn’t remind her of any of the Poles she knew in Chicago. Normally she would have refused an invitation like this, claiming an early morning meeting or some such excuse. But to her surprise, she found herself agreeing. Something about Veva intrigued her, and the prospect of doing something totally out of character was exciting. Besides, she reasoned, it was still relatively early in the evening and while her hotel room was charming, it offered little besides a large TV. Five minutes later they arrived at a four-story red brick building that, from its outward appearance, had once been a warehouse. “My husband bought the apartment soon after Katrina,” Veva said as she punched in a code on the panel beside a pair of heavy, wooden doors. “Nobody wanted to come downtown in those days, so it was a bargain. We live across the lake—Lake Pontchartrain—but this place is convenient when we go to concerts.” Any sense that the building had once been a factory disappeared as the doors swung open and automatically closed behind them. After the busy street noise, the silence was striking. A faint perfume of some sweet-smelling flower, the name of which escaped Jennifer, hung in the air. The spacious, dimly-lit foyer ended at a marble staircase that angled upwards into shadow. “You don’t mind if we take the stairs, do you?” Veva asked. “There’s an elevator but I prefer the exercise.” The apartment was on the top floor of the building and consisted of a spacious, high-ceilinged loft with a row of tall windows that spanned the whole length of one wall. Facing the windows was a galley kitchen, separated from the room by an island at which stood two high stools. A hallway led off the room, presumably to the bedroom and bathroom, Jennifer thought. Decorated in a minimalist style, the floors were of recycled lumber sanded to reveal the dark wood grain. An L-shaped sofa dominated the center of the room, strewn with cushions in muted colors. In the angle of the sofa stood a large glass coffee table, empty except for a pair of silver and bronze stirrups with an intricate Arabic design carved into their sides. Beside them lay a shield and sword, both equally stunning. An image of Genghis Khan flashed into Jennifer’s mind, seated astride his horse and looking fierce and magnificent. As she followed Veva towards the kitchen, she ran her fingers delicately over a slab of cream-colored wood supported by a complex arrangement of stainless-steel cables and posts that looked to be a writing desk of sorts. It felt like silk, the surface hardly registering on her fingertips. Pausing, she stared at the object on the desk, which she recognized as a Japanese suzuri, the ink stone nestled into an intricately carved dragon whose eyes were fixed upon a golden egg. Beside the suzuri lay a calligraphy brush. She looked over at Veva, who was watching her. “It’s very beautiful,” Jennifer said, gesturing towards the room. “I like beautiful things,” came the response. Jennifer watched as Veva reached upward to slide two wine glasses from the rack hanging above the island. The movement was fluid and practiced and despite her own petite frame, she felt awkward by comparison. “Your name is very unusual. Is it Polish?” Jennifer asked. “Finnish.” “What do you do…for work I mean?” “I work for the government,” came the reply, but something in Veva’s tone seemed to discourage further inquiry. “And you?” “I’m a lawyer. We do mostly health care stuff…representing hospitals and clinics. The laws around health care are changing all the time.” Veva nodded. “You drink white?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. “I have red if you prefer.” “White would be lovely.” She took out a bottle of wine, glanced at it, and uncorked it with practiced efficiency. “It’s a New Zealand wine and a good one. I promise.” Her blue eyes lingered on Jennifer for an extra few seconds. Then, with glasses and bottle in hand, she walked towards the hall. “Follow me,” she said without looking back and disappeared into a small passageway from which a spiral staircase led upward. The rooftop garden was a surprise. Each of the apartments in the building had its own private space, separated from neighbors by tall, wicker partitions. On opposite sides of Veva’s garden, a steel and glass wall allowed for an uninterrupted view of the New Orleans skyline. A trellis festooned with lush greenery covered much of the tiny space, shading a table and two chairs. Veva poured a generous measure into the glasses and offered one to Jennifer. She raised her own glass. “To safety,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly. For the next two hours they talked. Veva was a good listener, prompting the conversation with thoughtful questions, but offering little information about herself. Something about the rooftop—a sense of removal from the world—allowed Jennifer to open up in ways she never had before. Neither confessional nor therapy session, it felt more like a conversation with her inner self. She could hear the disappointment in her own voice as she talked about her divorce seven years earlier and the few men she had dated since. All the while Veva’s intense blue eyes held her attention, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she found herself yearning to elicit that unique smile. The temperature had dropped slightly and the wine bottle was empty. Veva stood up, stretched her arms above her head, and arched her back. She walked to the rail and looked towards the river. Silhouetted against the darkening skyline, Jennifer thought she looked magnificent, like a character out of an Avengers movie—feline, predatory, powerful. “Come join me,” Veva said, turning around to look at Jennifer. Although it was said softly, it was a command not a request. Standing side by side at the railing they stared into the distance, neither speaking. Then Veva turned towards her and gently stroked her face. The caress carried a question and at the same time an expectation. Jennifer held her breath, not certain whether she wanted the scene to progress. But her body had already decided. A warm ache made its way through her, bringing a flush to her face. Then Veva kissed her. Her tongue explored Jennifer’s mouth, withdrawing to linger over her lips, then plunging greedily again and again. Jennifer could taste the wine on Veva’s breath. She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw the scene unfolding in slow motion, like a drop of water creating gently expanding waves. She gasped as every cell in her body ached for this sublime feeling to go on forever. Veva’s mouth was still on hers, her arm around her neck, holding her in a tight embrace. Then she pulled away, took Jennifer’s hand in hers, and led her towards the stairs. At the bottom of the spiral staircase, Veva turned to her. She was smiling. “Let me blindfold you.” Her eyes were bright, her mouth slightly open as if expecting Jennifer to refuse. But there was no protest. She slid the silk scarf from around her neck and held it out in her two hands, like an offering. Jennifer took a deep breath and accepted, raising the scarf towards her face. Veva helped her tie the knot and whispered in her ear, “Trust me.” Jennifer could feel the warm breath followed by the tip of a tongue deftly probing her ear. A thrill of pleasure erupted in her core. There was a gentle pressure on her back pushing her forward, and instinctively she held her hands out in front of her. A finger caressed her outstretched palm, threading its way to her wrist and closing around it like a manacle. She felt a slight pull and allowed herself to be drawn into the bedroom. Like Alice falling down a rabbit hole she had no sense of what might happen next, but she was willing to give herself up entirely to whatever might unfold. * * * She knew Veva was gone as soon as she woke the following morning. It wasn’t just the absence of sound; it was as if someone had sucked all the life out of the apartment. For a few minutes Jennifer lay there thinking about the previous evening. Her hand went to her crotch, which was still wet and slightly bruised. She rolled over on her belly, inhaling Veva’s scent from the smooth sheet. Every fiber of her body craved the exquisite pleasure she had experienced. This is what jonesing for drugs must be like, she thought—a gnawing pain that begged to be satisfied. But there would be no antidote to ease her back into her previous life. She pushed the thought aside and got out of bed. In the living room, propped up against a tall glass of water, was a card-sized piece of cream-colored paper. The letter ‘V’ had been inscribed on it with a perfect brush stroke of black ink. She turned the card over but it was blank. Jennifer made a final tour of the apartment, trying to sear every detail of the space into her mind. She reached out to touch the suzuri, tracing the dragon from tail to head, her fingers lingering on the golden egg. The calligraphy brush lay beside it, still slightly damp. She took the card and slid it carefully into her purse. Then, with a feeling of immense loss, she left, closing the door decisively behind her. The next day was filled with people and presentations, welcome distractions that served to keep a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts at bay. Up to now, all of her sexual encounters had been heterosexual, and as Jennifer searched through scenes from her past, nowhere had she ever felt attracted to a woman. The evening with Veva had been more pleasurable than anything she had ever experienced. Although sex with her husband was satisfying, it had been unimaginative. None of the men she had slept with since her divorce had made her feel the way she had with Veva, and she wondered if it would change her life in any way. But this was something she didn’t want to dwell on, at least not yet. On the second evening of the conference, Jennifer arranged to have dinner with a friend from her law school days who was also attending the meeting. They hadn’t seen each other since before her divorce and spent an enjoyable couple of hours catching up. After dinner, he offered to walk her back to her hotel and she agreed, steering him on a circuitous route through the Warehouse District with the excuse of showing him the architecture. As they walked past Veva’s apartment building, Jennifer stole a glance upward, but the windows were unlit. On the final evening there was a cocktail party for the two hundred attendees in the ballroom of the conference hotel. Waiters carrying trays of canapés and glasses of wine wove their way expertly among the crowd. Jennifer stood at a tall bar table with a group of colleagues, not quite engaged with their conversation. Looking around the room at some of the now-familiar faces, her heart missed a beat. Staring at her from across the ballroom was Veva, a tiny smile lurking in the corner of her mouth. Their eyes locked for several seconds until the crowd closed in and Jennifer lost sight of her. She abruptly excused herself and rushed to the spot where she had last seen Veva, but she had disappeared. The following morning Jennifer took an early flight back to Chicago and by mid-afternoon was seated at her desk. Looking out her office window later that afternoon as the light was beginning to fade, she watched as the L-train threaded its way through the commercial buildings. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to remember, and as the scenes unfurled like flowers, a world of possibilities began to emerge. "Imagined Scenes" was previously published as "Scenes in a Movie" in my collection of short stories, Kernels . In this story, the breakthrough is an awakening as a young lawyer from Chicago has her first non-binary sexual experience with a woman she meets in New Orleans. Previous MARY BEHAN was formerly a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now writes fiction, memoir, and short stories. Her books, published by Laurence Gate Press, include Abbey Girls , a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland; A Measured Thread set in Wisconsin and Ireland, which was named a Top 100 Indie Book, a finalist in the Page Turner Awards, and an eLit medal winner; Kernels , a collection of short stories; and Finding Isobel , a companion to her first novel, was published in 2024 and awarded a gold medal for best adult fiction e-book by the Independent Publishers (IPPI), a silver medal in women’s fiction from Readers Favorite, and Outstanding Literary Fiction Winner in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. mvbehan.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley Dana Henry Martin The cows dead in the vast pastureland were shot as they grazed. They look like chunks of basalt until the mind adjusts to what it sees. Here, something with hooves, ears, a tail. There, a barreled body on its side, a number burned in its hip beside a brand like a symbol from an old scroll. They died nameless but not without identity: cows one through five, and two nursing calves. All night, they laid next to the powdered road, among the sands and sagebrush, a stone’s throw from pinyons, holes blown from ribs into lungs, from backs into intestines, a blush oval-shaped dish of skin around each entry. The news shows two adults but neither calf. That would be too much even for those bred in this rough country, where generations have nursed on heaving, iron-laden lands. It’s one thing for God to take what rightfully belongs to him through drought, hunger, heat. It’s another when a man stands at the edge of a road that’s not even his, points the tips of his boots at each animal he aims to shoot and kills a whole herd, even the babies. Easy targets if you’re willing to trespass, to get dirt on the hems of your jeans, and flee before you’re seen. The shooter moved under a dark cape below Taurus the bull squinting from the stars, seven girls dancing forever in his shoulder, The Pleiades carried to the heavens to escape Orion the hunter who vowed to kill every brute in the world. Then, morning: the night sky’s inverse. Seven dead cows a black constellation against bright earth, dark angels whose story’s written in the dirt. — “Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley” is based on a story by the same title in St. George News , the online newspaper for Southwest Utah. The breakthrough for this poem was being able to write it at all. I read the news story in 2022, but couldn't write the poem until 2025, despite wanting to. How do we talk about such things? How do we live in a place we love where such things happen? I wanted the cows and calves to have a different ending, a different story. So I gave them one that's part funeral, part myth. That was my way into the poem. Previous DANA HENRY MARTIN is a poet, medical writer, and health- and mental-health advocate whose chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, 2012), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009). Martin's work has appeared in The Adroit Journal , Barrow Street , Cider Press Review , FRiGG , Laurel Review , Mad in America , Meat for Tea , Muzzle , New Letters , Rogue Agent , Sheila-Na-Gig , SWWIM , Trampoline , and other literary journals. She weaves, birds, and hangs out with the cows who live next to the cemetery in Toquerville, Utah. danahenrymartin.com Next

Writing to Delight You Let's go!

Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us by Kase Johnstun Storms, here along the Wasatch Front in the summer, change things. They have become so rare that when they do come, they sweep across our landscape like hands picking up lost children. They never last long enough to cleanse us, to give us a fresh start, like the storms did during my youth, but they come to let us know that our skies can, if pushed hard enough, give us rain. Then they leave us to ache for another flash in the sky. We go whole summers without them, the dry and hot air settling in the valley as if it were a squatter claiming its land and unwilling to leave. We pray for it to leave. The high desert cries for a drink. Just the other night, I lay in my son's bed. He and his mom lay in ours. I had a big run the next morning, so I didn't want to bother everyone when I got up early to drink coffee, and eat breakfast before heading out. A storm came. We hadn't had our windows open for days. It was early August, and it had been 99 degrees during the day for more than a week. A stiff air filled the house like a corpse lying immovable in a tomb. The trees began to move outside when I lay down. They moved just a bit at first, so I closed my eyes, crossed my hands over my chest, and tried to sleep. A thwapping sound managed to break through the closed sliding glass door that opens up to a deck outside my son's room. I sat up, looked outside, and saw the limbs of our massive trees begin to sway back and forth. And then a shot of lightning lit the sky over Great Salt Lake. Within moments, I made my way around the home and opened any window that could be opened. I turned on all the fans and then returned to bed. I lay there again. This time, sprawled out, exposing as much of my skin to the cool breeze that I could, its frequent gusts bathing me in damp air. It came in waves at first. A hot wind. A cool breeze. A warm wind. A cooler breeze. A brisk wind. Then it stayed so cool. And then the rain came, and wind carried its scent into the room. I did not want to sleep. Instead, I lay there until 1:00 AM, long after my wife and son had begun to snore together in the room across the hallway. I thought about so many things that night just to keep myself awake, to be able to feel the cold breeze and smell the rain and live in a home that had just taken its first breath of fresh air in months. *** Lightning storms were like magic in our Utah childhood home. During the dry summer, when the lightning came, my dad would turn off the television, turn off the lights in the living room, and open the windows that faced the Weber River. The breeze picked up and turned into a wind. We lived at the mouth of Weber Canyon, so when the winds came, they came hard. They rushed through our open windows and flushed out the stale air of summer. We huddled together on the couch, the four of us, and we watched the darkened skyline. And then the show began. Lightning lit up the hill a mile away like the graceful and powerful legs of ballet dancers, touching down and lifting and touching down again. Moments later, thunder shook our home while we waited for an encore. The house had been filled with the smell of a storm. I placed my hands and arms on the back of the couch and kneeled down and leaned against its soft cushions and watched the skyline drop lightning against the night. Sometimes rain came too. We wouldn't go to bed or turn the television back on until the storm had passed. The breeze would stay all night. The windows would stay open until morning. The next day, the house would smell new. And yes, we would talk about the storm as if it were a new show or movie we had all watched on opening night. In 1999, I would leave Utah to live somewhere else for the first time in m y oung life. I packed up my Toyota and drove across Colorado and most of Kansas. The peaks of the Rocky Mountains faded into the dry detritus of the high plains of Wyoming, the winds covering the road behind me in a whirl of sand and heat and thin air so far above sea level. Denver rose out of the eastern slope and then Kansas came, not like a riptide or a wave or a rush of earth that sprung out of the ground, but like the gentle feel of a morning when there is nothing on the day's agenda, a slow and peaceful rise that can only come from the vast plains of soy and wheat, corn and cattle. That day, the day I left my hometown for the first time, I could have driven across those Kansas plains forever. I was on that first real journey, the one that would change the course of everything I would ever do from then on. They all do. All the big moves. All the moves that promise no real return home to the place where we grew up. The sun sets differently in Kansas than it does in northern Utah. It seems to take its time. In Utah, the sun drops fast over the lake and the Oquirrh Mountains, the peaks of the mountains cutting into its bright orange roundness until they have cut it all the way through. In Kansas, the sun does not 'drop.' It does not 'fall.' The plains stretch out forever toward the horizon. The curve of the earth dips in the farthest distance. And the sun settles on the earth's subtle edge and seems to hold there for hours, the rich reds and oranges and yellows of light dripping onto the plains. And the storms. When I first saw a wall of clouds move across the sky, I was a newbie graduate student; I was still a child. A new friend and I stood in a park in the center of the city of 50,000 people, most of whom were students. We tossed a baseball back and forth. It thwapped in our gloves, leather smacking against leather, moments of clarity and fulfillment that always come, catch after catch, when playing in an open park. We played catch for an hour, just bullshitting about our lives before we moved to central Kansas. We talked about writers we loved while sharing our fragmented, short biographies that we believed to be so rich and full and long at the time, both of us barely nearing our mid-twenties. That's when the storm came. It moved across the plains. The sky turned a hazy green, a Kansan's telltale sign of an oncoming tornado, and then the hail came. My friend and I ran to his car and huddled in the front seats to ride out the storm. He cracked a beer and gave me one. We sat there and watched the storm and listened to the radio as the tornado circled the city; we became friends, sitting in a car, watching the storm roll. Once, while traveling back to Kansas from a long break spent in Utah, a large storm front pushed toward I-70 just past the eastern border of Colorado and the western border of Kansas. Like a wall of black night had come for me, it shot bolts of lightning toward the earth, trumpeters announcing the arrival of a powerful demigod that shook the earth. At the edge of the storm, as if a sharp knife had cut through the clouds, leaving a nearly perfect line between the storm and the open sky, the7 bright, bright blue of a sunny, cloudless day struck a contrast so deep in color and texture that it shocked my senses. And the black wall pushed fast against the blue sky, toward me. Where I came from, from the Mountain West, storms do not come like this. They follow our mountains like trail guides from the Pacific Northwest or come up through the Southwest or from California, slowly. We see them coming a long way away. By the time storms reach Utah, the second driest state in the Union, they have long lost their battle against the high pressure of the mountains or dropped their rain in Oregon or Washington or were weakened in the deserts of Arizona and Las Vegas. Sure, there are winds and rain and thunder and lightning. Now, in a world that we know is getting hotter and in a time when we know a shift in the climate could take the wind and our precious dry snow from us for years, we want the storms to punch us hard in the gut of the valley. In 2001, I left Utah again, only having spent one month there after graduating from school in Kansas, I headed to Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin, my first night, I lay in bed in a convent just outside of Trinity College. The building was completely silent, by rule. The nuns hosted travelers like me who had yet to find a place to live. I checked into the massive, old building with stone archways that bent over the stone floors, all parts of building that have stood longer than Utah has been a state, longer than the Mormon church has existed, before my Hispanic greatgrandfather crossed the Atlantic Ocean and married my Native American great-grandmother, long before any of those things that brought me here, a child in his mid-twenties who lay in his bed. It rained hard outside my window. I would find that this heavy rain was not a storm at all in Ireland, only a shower that came most days in the months leading up to winter. But it was a storm to me, a boy coming from a cold desert in the Rocky Mountains. I listened to the rain pound against the window. I doubted every decision I had ever made in my short life. Relationships. Family. School. Drug use. I lay next to the opened window and listened to the rain hit the exterior walls. It splashed down and puddled up on the window sill and clinked against the fire escape ladder. It smelled so fresh, so real. I missed home. Mostly, I thought about the girl from Kansas I had started to date before I left for Dublin. She is now my wife, nearly 20 years later. As a gift, she sent me away with a folding picture frame, a small, black thing that I could carry in my pocket. When I opened it up, I saw her face. When I pushed a circular black button, she spoke to me through a recording. I opened it every night before I fell asleep, multiple times, and listened to her say 'hello.' Six months later, I drove back to Kansas from Utah to see the same girl who put her picture in that little frame. A storm front moved across the plains toward my truck. At first, I was amazed at how thick and predominant the edge of the front looked, how the defined wall of storm drew a line in the center of the vast blue sky. When the winds picked up and began to blow my truck from side to side on the interstate, and as drivers with Kansas plates began to pull the cars beneath overpasses and put on their hazard lights, the awe of the storm remained, and the darkness moved toward us. I turned on the AM radio and scanned for weather updates. The updates ran on repeat as I drove through small towns, one of the few cars still pushing its way through head and side and tail winds that whipped the one-ton vehicle around like a paper airplane caught in the breeze of a house fan. I never saw the twister, never looked out my front window and saw it coming my way, but the radio, keeping everyone listening up to speed, told me that it chased me northeast toward The Little Apple. I would pass a town sign. The radio's voice would say that the tornado was heading toward that town. I would pass another town sign, and the radio would warn the people there, telling them to listen for the tornado sirens and to get indoors and in their basements. The wind pushed my Toyota back and forth across the barren road. Huge chunks of hail slammed hard into my truck, and the storm chased me. I drove as fast as I could across the plains. I turned off I-70 and the storm turned southwest and the winds calmed, and I waited for my girlfriend, the clouds above us just a hazy gray over bright blue. When she finally came out, our official life together started. Twenty years later, however, I lay in my son's bed, and the upheaval of the choices of my youth have calmed along with rising drought of my Utah home. The cold wind comes into the room and touches all of my exposed skin. My family sleeps so close by, their snores in asynchronous wave together. Mom and son. I think about storms, about rain, about wind, and watch the tree branches waving. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us” is one of my favorites, and one I was baffled about when it didn’t find a home. If you know me, I am not very confident in saying that about any of my work! [Editors’ Note: “Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us” was nominated for The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Small Presses .] .................................................................................................................................................................................... KASE JOHNSTUN is an award-winning essayist, memoirist, and Manager for The Utah Center for the Book (Library of Congress). Kase is the author of the award-winning memoir Beyond the Grip of Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co., 2015), the award-winning novel Let the Wild Grasses Grow (Torrey House Press, 2021), and the novel Cast Away (Torrey House Press, 2024). kasejohnstun.com Next - Fake Soldiers by Kase Johnstun Next

The Concrete Poet by Jim LaVilla-Havelin I. this is the first trans mission of the con crete poet report on exhibit at co-op gallery no press release no postcard no crackers no brie II. the alter native paper critic who is sometimes too smart for words but still uses them found her way there wrote: “_______ has found an alphabet of disaster.” III. somewhere between the calligraphic epics of Cy Twombly the incised mud-silica of Dubuffet the Rosetta Stone and J.G. Ballard’s CRASH IV. was this my fifteen minutes of fame? hiding in the basement while the police streamed through the sleek gallery asking everyone my name, my des cription, my whereabouts V. the art critic for the daily who also reviews restaurants, books, and covers the auto show describes them as “a grammar of happenstance or perhaps mishappenstance” VI. I don’t know when I first began to see them as messages scraped by metal onto barriers stories in stone VII. out with the truck with the pneumatic lift cones, flashers the jackhammer and the blow torch it comes to me we’re not in art school any more more dangerous than pastels VIII. it is the opposite of graffiti I remove de-construct re-contextualize present an outlaw aesthetic that makes art-speak go tongue-tied IX. I am so tired of the language meta phor I went to the wall to escape words I hacked out these sections of barrier to see silence as much as any markings deaths or near scrapes with it may have left I’m not telling stories I’m hammering away at walls Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue THE CONCRETE POET is the third volume of a five-book sequence. Though this section was written in 2010, the book is just now (2024) reaching its conclusion. This was the first section I wrote. It’s a favorite because it lays out some of the extent of what the long poem will include. A road map? A first shot of a voice? A catalogue of possibilities. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN is the author of eight books of poetry, including two forthcoming in 2025, Mesquites Teach Us to Bend (Lamar University Press, 2025) and A Thoreau Book (Alabrava Press, 2025). He is the co-editor of the Houston University Press, Unsung Masters volume on Rosemary Catacalos (2025) and as Literary Executor for Catacalos’ estate, he is assembling her unpublished work for a volume Sing! . An educator, editor, and community arts activist for over 50 years, LaVilla-Havelin coordinates National Poetry Month activities in San Antonio. Awarded the City of San Antonio’s Distinction in the Arts for Literary Art, he teaches at The Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center for Gemini Ink’s Partners Program, teaches senior citizens in the Go Arts Program through Bihl Haus Cultural Arts, and high school students as Poet in Residence at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Next - Bruce by J. Diego Frey Next

Past Lives... That's Still a Thing, Right? by J. Diego Frey In my most recent past life, I was almost exactly the same I am now (same job same body shape and fear of spiders same wrinkled cotton wardrobe) except that my hair was curly my name was Margery and my beard was longer. Oh, and I had tentacles where my ears are now. Personal-sized octopus arms, about the thickness of a Marks-a-Lot brand magic marker and long enough to hold in front of my face a cob of buttered corn, which I would eat using the same chewing motions that I do now. In the life before that, prior to the great gene wars of the 2050s, I was shorter, and chubbier, hairier in all the wrong places. And I sold pet insurance to the nervous widows of Omaha. There must be some record of the life that proceeded that but the ether is murky. I was a sort of famous vaudeville act a few lives prior to that. On stage, animal noises would resonate through my enormous, hairy proboscis. In make-up, I had the head of a donkey. My showbiz-name was J. Donkey Frell. A big nose and a fey artistic tendency described my person through an extended series of lives during a dozen generations preceding this, always one of many similar, short, hairy men, weak of will and chin falling always to the sad symphonies of war or at least the singing telegram of venereal disease. Little known fact: Chlamydia…got its name from a character in an unpopular satiric opera I wrote in Vienna in the 1800s. Mostly, though, the spirits describe me as just a surfer of the lower to middle layers of society in a succession of Balkan territories. Notably, once, in the 17th century, I was, due to a clerical error, the Pope for three weeks. Remarkable—my eyeglasses prescription has been almost the same in every life. I don’t want to brag but the gypsy told me that a few thousand years ago, I was a red show pony named Fernutis— rumored to be quite handsome. The gypsy rules our lives. She twists the fabric of time and reality into dental floss. Do not forget to tip the gypsy. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This is a newer poem by me—first draft written maybe 3 years ago. It’s a much longer poem than the previous example. I’ve always felt more comfortable with the short poems, always worrying about overstaying my welcome. But lately I’ve been trying to stretch things out a bit. Mark Doty talks about pushing yourself past the end of your draft to discover where the poem is going to go after your current last line, and it turns out that can be a fun exercise. Mostly I hope that I am keeping the energy all the way through this poem. It starts out with a nice juicy image, so most of my revisions have been along the lines of enriching the subsequent imagery (hmmm…just noticed how close the word imagery is to the name Margery…). Thanks for sticking with the poem over all 23 stanzas! I hope this poem will be an anchor for my new, yet-to-find-an-interested-publisher collection, Froot Loop Moon . .................................................................................................................................................................................... J. DIEGO FREY is a poet living in the Denver area, which is where he grew up and never completely escaped. He published two quite likable collections of poetry, Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked with Colorado publisher Conundrum Press. jdiego.com Next - Interstellar by David Romtvedt Next

The Organization of Bones by Joel Long Let’s rearrange the bones by size while the goat looks on. Let’s line them up to cardinal points so shadow tells the time. The double doors may open for me to look over your brown shoulder, your dark hair that covers your skull where the rivers are falling and the trees are green with birds. Start with the bones of the ear, small sand, then move to the tarsals, these glyphs made for waving the hand, the hinge in the dark circuit of the blood, but here they are soldiers at May Day, such precision, such a proud song. The goat begins to hum and nibbles the threshold, fur bristling like vellum before the monk takes out the blade. The warmth of your body is so quaint against the arrangement you’ve made, a relic of what you are, the past so filled with warm bodies and singing goats, a thousand setting suns indifferent to the coming night. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I was moved by Salgado's photo, Children Playing with Animal Bones, Brazil, 1983 , the three children in their own bodies rearranging the bones into symmetrical lines, making sense of the bones in some way. Of course, the light in the photograph is beautiful in its arrangement as well. With any ekphrastic poem like this, I hope to find release from the artistic image so that the poem finds its own voice tinged with the atmosphere of the trigger artwork. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JOEL LONG'S book of essays Watershed is forthcoming from Green Writers Press. His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review , Ocean State Review , Sports Literate , Prairie Schooner , Bellingham Review , Rhino , Bitter Oleander , Massachusetts Review , Terrain , and Water-Stone Review , among others. He lives in Salt Lake City. Next - Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us by Kase Johnstun Next

we've been out dancing by Gabriela Halas Throb of blood flows like sweet sap to rhythms both old, and unorthodox. Could the pluck of grass be set to measure? The pull of water from an upturned palm be set to song? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Currrent Issue Sometimes the beauty of poetry is in its simplicity—the ability to convey a lot w ith so little, in tangible, literal words. Nothing shrouded, nothing obscure or abstract. The word 'simplicity' is not often used in a positive way with poetry but I feel like that can be such a strength. The poem "we've been out dancing" is just that, a way to celebrate movement in our bodies that feels both ancien and like we are experiencing it for the first time. .................................................................................................................................................................................... GABRIELA HALAS immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in British Columbia. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including The Antigonish Review , Cider Press Review , About Place Journal , Prairie Fire , december magazine , and The Hopper , among others; fiction in Room Magazine , Ruminate , The Hopper , and subTerrain, among others; and nonfiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Whitefish Review , Grain , Pilgrimage , and High Country News . She won first prize for her poetry chapbook Bloodwater Tint from Backbone Press (forthcoming). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives and writes on Ktunaxa Nation land. gabrielahalas.org Next - northern climate II by Gabriela Halas Next

The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Across the river, trotting, the fox. Who pauses to test the river’s rotten ice with ginger step. Will she trust it this late in the year? She draws back her paw, licks. Appraises the river’s dangerous skin. Looks at me as if to say what purpose, these stories, that make fable of my life? None, I say, but the sheen of dream and magic they lend to our lives. She cocks her head, considering. Squats to piss. She is just an animal, marking with scent. She scratches at her haunch, stands to shake herself, is gone. I’m left alone on the human side, in this territory demarcated by words. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This unpublished poem was inspired by stories of fox wives, animals who transform into humans. This is the final poem of a series that didn’t quite materialize. The poem reflects the longing I felt as I wrote: I wanted transformation too, but to escape words and human constructions. This poem points to the impossibility of that and returns from myth to the real world of the fox. It’s also my only poem written in form. .................................................................................................................................................................................... LISA CHAVEZ is a poet and memoirist from Alaska now living in the mountains of New Mexico with a pack of Japanese dogs. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico and is the author of In An Angry Season (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Destruction Bay (West End Press, 1998). Next - A Cat Place by Star Coulbrooke Next

A Cat Place Bobcats aren’t very big; they just sound that way, filling the night with caterwauling so hideous they are uncommonly assumed to weigh as much as large dogs …There is even a recorded case of an 11-pound bobcat kitten killing a mature doe of about 100 pounds. —Audubon, Nov-Dec 1999 by Star Coulbrooke In Big Hollow they say mountain lions used to bed down on the streamside under cottonwoods, wait for deer to come and drink. One pounce up from watercress and dark grass, the next day nothing, no trace of deer bones or guts, not even blood left there in the soft black soil. At twelve my sister walked the canal every day above the hollows, stopped along the way to look for caterpillars on milkweed, snakes in the shade of chokecherries lining the sunny hillside. One afternoon a shriek tore her from reverie, a screaming and thrashing like ten mountain lions. She focused her eyes across the canal to see in Cedar Hollow a bobcat trapped in steel jaws set by our cousins that morning. You can’t forget that sound, she says. Nothing gets beyond such pain. Years later it returns unbidden, just as everything you read from then on about wild cats will bring back that sound, that scene, that place. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue My younger sister started wandering the hills and canyons of our family farm in Idaho long before she started first grade. Her love for all the wild and tame animals there has inspired lots of poems. The poem has special meaning for me because it blends my sister’s love of nature with my love of reading nature magazines. I like the way the poem contemplates the danger and the science and the girl’s story that affects her (and her sister) decades later. .................................................................................................................................................................................... STAR COULBROOKE was the inaugural poet laureate of Logan City, Utah, and co-founder of the Helicon West Reading Series. Her most recent poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory , Both Sides from the Middle and City of Poetry from Helicon West Press. Next - Walking the Bear by Star Coulbrooke Next