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< Back to Breakthroughs Issue WHEN HE HAD TO TRAVEL Carol Coven Grannick I remember how I’d pat the sheets— dark green—when he was gone, a rhythmic touch with gentle beats I remember how I’d pat the sheets read poems brimmed with love conceits and woke alone at dawn. I remember how I’d pat the sheets— dark green—when he was gone. “When He Had to Travel” is a poem that marks a breakthrough in my journey with the man I was dating. He travelled a lot for his work at that time, and this triolet marks the night I decided I wanted to marry him. I wrote it in the last year during his final illness, and read it to him. He loved it. Previous CAROL COVEN GRANNICK is an award-winning poet and children's author of Reeni's Turn (Fitzroy Books, 2020). carolcovengrannick.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue DEAD MAN'S MONEY Michael Henson She was up in the park giving head to some old man in the front seat of his raggedy Chevy, and he was about to do the deed. His back arched, his body stiffened, his hand caressed the back of her head, he rose up two inches out of his seat. Then everything came to a stop. All the starch went out of him. He sank back down, his hand slipped away, he wilted and he sighed. “Come on baby,” she whispered. “You can do it for me.” But he had stopped all his rocking and moaning. He had gone limp as a sock. She raised her head; she was puzzled. This was something new. And strange. Then she heard the cackle. It was a strange, brittle, crackle of a sound like paper when it’s crumpled. From her angle, she could only see the business end of him, but the strange, mocking cackle seemed to come from somewhere else, from above, or to the side, or from deep inside him. She could not tell. It scared her; she sat up and backed away so she could look him in the face. “What’s up, honey?” she asked. “What’s the matter?” But the man would not answer. He clutched at his chest. His mouth gaped; he made little nods; he stared; he pleaded with his eyes. But he did not –could not—speak. Oh my God , she thought. “Oh my God,” she asked him. “Are you gonna die right here?” Was this a heart attack? She tried to remember, what do you do when somebody’s having a heart attack? “Are you okay?” she asked him. “Honey, are you okay?” He said nothing, but his eyes still pleaded. You are , she thought. You’re having a heart attack and you’re gonna die right here. Slowly, his hands relaxed across his chest. Then she heard again the weird cackle. Where did it come from? He shivered; his hands dropped slowly to his lap. His eyes still seemed to plead, but his lids drooped, slowly, like a schoolhouse flag coming down, bit by bit, until they closed altogether. Then his head tilted forward toward his chest and he slowly slid against the car door. She backed away, way up against the opposite door. She was afraid to even touch him. He didn’t breathe and he didn’t move. What do I do? she thought. What do I do? Was he dead? Just like that? She made herself brave and lifted his hand, then dropped it right away. His hand fell limp as a rag. Oh my God , she thought. Oh my God, what the fuck am I gonna do? She had her cell phone, but who would she call anyway? 9-1-1? The police? Her mother? If only she could call her mother. What the fuck , she thought. Please Jesus, what the fuck am I gonna do? There was no one around. They were in a tucked-away nook of a big park that overlooked the river. It was all woods to one side and a picnic area to the other. It was late afternoon in mid-week. A late-November wind kicked leaves around the empty picnic benches. No one was likely to come by here, but they might. The police made regular sweeps. High school kids came here to smoke weed and make out. And the joggers didn’t care what the fuck the weather was. It was an all-right place to conduct a little quick private business, but someone was bound to come around eventually. She couldn’t stay here long . Not with this poor guy sitting next to her dead as a hammer. A car was headed their way, slowly, so she thought it might be undercover. “Okay, darlin’,” she said to the dead man. “I gotta make like I’m talking to you, so don’t you fall down.” She raised his head and turned his shoulders so that he faced her. “Please don’t fall down,” she said. “Please. Please. Please.” He did not fall down, but his jaw went slack and his mouth fell open as if he really were about to speak. And his eyes, having peeped back open, still seemed to plead. What? She wanted to ask, What do you want? The undercover car—if that’s what it was—rolled on by and out of sight. She was ready to get the hell out of this car. But she looked the man over one more time and realized she couldn’t leave him like he was, with his dick still hanging out. He’s probably got kids and all, she thought. Grandkids, probably, from the look of him. She did not want him to haunt her for what they might see if they found him. Carefully, she put him back together decent. She tucked him in like a baby, pulled up his zipper, buttoned his trousers, and fastened his belt. “Now, motherfucker,” she said. “You owe me. No one’s ever gonna know you died getting a blow job from a crackhead. So you owe me.” To collect what she was owed, she first looked around to be sure no one was watching, then reached around him to where he kept his billfold. It took some doing, but she maneuvered it out of his pocket and opened it. Oh holy fuck! Her eyes went wide. The wallet was fat with bills, more than she could count. She fanned through the stack and she saw a thick wad of twenties, fifties, and even a deck of Benjamins. “You must have hit the fucking lottery,” she said to the man. “And I was your celebration.” All that money. It gave her a little buzz just to think of it. She could stay fucked up for a week on this much money. She could pay the rent, buy up some food and pay off her phone. She could send some money to her mother for the kids and still stay fucked up for days. But she knew better than to take it all. Somebody would find him, sooner or later. Somebody would wonder what happened to all his lottery money or back wages or Black Lung money or whatever it was that got a man who drove an old beat-up hooptie a wad of cheese that was thick as a brick. If the billfold was empty, they would think he had been robbed and they would come looking and if they looked long enough, they would find her. “I might be a dope fiend,” she told him, “and I might be a whore. But I ain’t stupid.” Still, he owed her. She took out a bill, thought about it, and took another. Fair enough, she thought, for what she had been through. A couple hundred bucks for an hour’s work. She hesitated a moment more. It was a lot of money to leave behind, a lot of blow jobs on a lot of old men. No, she couldn’t let it all go like that. It was like God had put all that money in her hands and was she going to turn it down? Fuck that . His kids and his grandkids would just have to suck it. None of them was willing to do for him what she did or else he wouldn’t have to come down to the hood looking for the likes of her. So she thumbed through the billfold again. This time, she took about half the bills and stuffed them in a wad into the pocket of her jacket. She shut up the billfold and worked it back into his pocket. She looked around once more to see if anyone was watching. Please, Jesus , she begged. Don’t let nobody come by now . Then she slipped out the door of the car and into the woods. But which way to go? She hardly knew where she was. The park covered many acres and it was looped through with woods and winding roads and hiking paths. She knew better than to try the roads. Too much traffic, too many cops. So she figured she could weave her way through the woods until she was back on some street she knew. Then she could hit the turf again like nothing had happened. Just another evening on the stroll. But first, she had to get off the hill and out of these woods. It would be dark soon. This ain’t gonna be no picnic, she thought. She was dressed for the street and not some wild place like this. She guessed that she was on a trail as she entered the woods, but it petered out quickly and she fought through briars and honeysuckle that scratched her ankles and slashed at her face until she broke free of the thickety stuff and came into a deeper, older woods. It was as quiet in here as a chapel. She paused to catch her breath. She was not used to walking anywhere but the streets, and these were totally the wrong shoes with their thin soles and open toes. There’s got to be a path, she thought. And as she stared into the woods a moment, there it was. Out of the maze of tree trunks, deadfalls, intersecting branches, and littered leaves, a pattern emerged, a deer trail, as if it had just formed itself right before her. Still, it was no easy thing to follow the deer trail. She had to duck under and step over a series of branches and logs, but eventually the deer trail crossed a path laid out by the park people, a clear easy path, soft with mulch. But which way? She had no idea where she was and which direction to turn. She guessed to the right, and she prayed, Please, Jesus, don’t let nobody come down this path, nobody walking his dog, nobody meeting her boyfriend. Her heels kept sinking into the mulch, so she took off her shoes. The ground was cold and she began to sniffle. I’ll catch cold for sure , she thought. Or maybe bronchitis or pneumonia . And when she thought of being laid up with no way to make a living, she regretted the money she left behind in the dead man’s wallet. Winter would soon hammer down onto the streets. It would be sweet to have one of those nice down coats, all bubbled up with feathers inside and warm as toast. She could see herself work the corner in her fine, fly, warm, high-collar coat. But she knew what would happen to her coat. She would have a slow day and she would need a hit. She would sell the coat for a nickel and her coat would go up the pipe. She would stay high for a hot minute while some other bitch walked around all warm in her coat. And she would be straight back out on the street in her little shivery thin jacket that she would never sell because nobody would want it. So fuck the coat , she thought. She was glad to have the thin jacket now, for it was colder in the woods than it had been on the street and colder yet, now that the day was getting late. Her bare feet were cold on this path, but at least she had her jacket. She continued down the path until it opened on an overlook. There was nothing to mark it but a little bench, but the view was clear from off the hill. There was the river, far below, and there were the Kentucky hills on the other side. A barge tilted downstream. Here and there, houses along either shore and way up in the Kentucky hills had winked on their lights. She stood up on the bench for a better view. Directly below her was River Road. Miniature cars and trucks barreled out toward the suburbs. And to the left, there was the pattern of dark buildings and small lights that she knew was her neighborhood. It looked incredibly far away. * * * For an hour, two hours, she had no idea how long, she walked, scrambled, plowed through the woods and thickets, blind and scared, full of dirt and tears. The darkness had dropped on her like a predator. She lost the shoes somewhere in the thickets. She had left the path once she realized it was taking her right back to the place where she had left her poor dead trick. She knew it when the path started to turn back uphill and she knew it for sure when she saw the lights flash through the trees. So someone had found the dead man and called the police. Their radios squawked and scratched. The trees were slashed with red and blue lights. * For an hour, two hours, she had no idea how long, she scrambled downhill through the dark thickets, away from the dead man and the red and blue lights. By the time she emerged at the fence line of someone’s backyard, she was scratched up in her face and ankles, her hair was strung all out of place and full of leaves and twigs. Her face was streaked with tears, dirt, and snot. Inside the fence, a dog was raising hell and pulling at his chain. Inside the kitchen, she could see a woman fixing dinner, a big, heavy-boned woman with long, straight hair. The woman had her radio going, and she danced around her kitchen and she danced at her counter and at her stove. She stared at the dancing woman until the woman raised her window to yell at the dog. Then she pulled back into the woods. * * * She had to work through more thickets of tangled briar and intersecting honeysuckle until she came to a string of abandoned houses, dark and empty. She was scared, but there were no dogs to raise hell and no one to watch her come out of the woods and onto River Road. She was used to cold and hunger. She was used to being tired. She was a street hooker, after all. She could pull long hours on nothing but coffee and cigarettes and that blessed hit off the pipe, that oh-so-blessed, blister-lip hit off that smooth glass pipe. She would have stalked straight down River Road like a soldier on a forced march but she was cold and hungry and tired like she had never been before. And she was lonely and she was depressed and she was crying for pity for the poor motherfucker who died with his pecker in her hand. And she was crying for herself, that she was ragged and cold and tired and shoeless out on River Road. She was shivering and fiending for that hit off the pipe. The sidewalks were hard and cold and full of grit, but she slogged one slow step after another. Her feet, by now, were raw, cut up by twigs, gravel, and bits of broken glass. I used to run barefoot all summer long , she thought. Now I can barely walk . She walked barefoot and sore for over a mile past more of the houses with their lighted kitchens and their living rooms warmed by television, past solid blocks of abandoned shops and tenements. Trucks rolled by and shook the ground around her. She saw no one out but a half dozen children gathered under a light by a dock. The children shouted and threw rocks into the river. They flung them far out into the water if the rocks were small, or if they were larger, straight off the dock with a great kawhoosh that made all the children scream and laugh. She stopped by a telephone pole and listened to the voices of the children, their shouts and laughter and the great kawhoosh of the rocks in the water. My life , she thought, is a curse . * * * She left behind the children at the dock and walked until she came within a hundred paces of her home. Another hundred steps. The block where she lived and worked was just in sight and a hundred steps would get her to her door. She could see the buildings and the lights in the buildings. She knew that the dope boys watched at their stations in front of those buildings. She had not seen them, and they had not seen her. But she could almost feel their presence. She could almost see the gold in their teeth and the gold at their necks. She could almost smell the sweat in their palms. One hundred steps and she could hand over one of her bills and a dope boy would fetch her a big yellow boulder the size of her fist. And she could take the rest of her money and pay the bill on her phone. She could buy some shoes—good shoes—to replace the shoes she had lost. She could give her mother some money for the kids. It would feel so good. It would be so sweet. And yet, she could not move. She knew what would happen. There would be no bills paid, no shoes, no money to give her mother. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her jacket and she wiped her cheeks with the cuffs of her jacket and she trembled on the lip of the curb. Around the corner and up the street, a hundred steps from where she stood, there was food and warmth and the comfort of the pipe and yet she could not move. Something had ended and something had begun. She trembled and sobbed with her fist balled up around the dead man’s money and she did not know where to turn or whether to turn at all. She teetered like a child on the edge of the curb. She teetered forward and she teetered back; she shivered with indecision. What now? She thought. What the fuck do I do now? "Dead Man's Money" was published in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel , the annual publication of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. In this story, a woman teeters on the brink of a decision to seek a new life. Previous MICHAEL HENSON was born and raised in Sidney, Ohio and came to Cincinnati to go to college at Xavier University. After teaching school in Adams County and completing an M.A. at the University of Chicago, he worked as a community organizer, machine tender and forklift operator in a paper bag factory, union steward, substance abuse counselor, and adjunct professor at Xavier University and other colleges. He is the author of six books of fiction and four collections of poetry. His work includes Maggie Boylan , a finalist for the Weatherford Award for Appalachian fiction; Crow Call , poems in response to the murder of housing activist Buddy Gray; and The Triumphal Descent of Donald J. Trump into Hell, as Recounted to the Archangel Gabriel, from a Manuscript Discovered, Edited, and Translated from the Original Aramaic , a political fantasy. Henson is a member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative and the Carter Bridge Bluegrass Band. He lives in Cincinnati. michaelhenson.org Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue RUTHLESS E. D. Lloyd-Kimbrel after Mary I will teach you, she said, to be ruthless. Greatness can be achieved no other way, she said. You will learn to sharpen and cut, to do the hard prune. You will be acolyte to gardeners to butchers to desert saints, she said. Words sentiments dreams relations must be reduced to hard bone so pale in the moonlight that it glows with naked sanctity, she said. You are good, she said. But weakness lurks softness lingers compromise leans in and your grip loosens. You are in debt. You owe to yourself the sinew the essence the abandonment of all except the elemental, she said. Keep nothing that gentles that sings regret. Keep only that which is harsh in its purity. You must be great, she said, because anything else is not enough. Nothing is enough, I said. I will stay as I am, I said. And so I was ruthless after all. Published in Tangled Locks Journal . As regards compositional commentary, I prefer not to deconstruct my poems too much—what prompted them for me may not be how readers experience them. To paraphrase something Robert Frost somewhere said, once the poem is out in the world, it is no longer simply yours. That being said, though, in both of these poems the "breakthrough" involves a recognition of self-worth, with “Ruthless” being somewhat Socratic in approach and “Pourquoi Moi” being slightly satiric by way of referential whimsy (in a nod to Ron Padgett’s poem “Nothing in That Drawer”), but both being resolute. Thank you very much for reading my verses. Previous E.D. LLOYD-KIMBREL (whose car masquerades as a branch library) has published biographical, critical, and scholarly essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry, including a chapbook, Matrimonies (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue WATCHING FOG Austin Holmes beyond the rain-dampened fence past the highway the mesa invisible in the distance looming in its cloak like a red panther power lines hover like slender black hairs caught in the wind across the gray when we can no longer drink the water drops of rain fall like imitations this cold room is unlit still the morning has amounted to nothing why am I sitting here watching air obliterate air contemplating what I cannot see I can feel the arms that carry us all tremble with our weight their grip loosening a bit more each day "Morning Fog" is from a forthcoming manuscript titled Some Things Weren't Meant to Mend . I wrote this poem on a rainy morning, looking from my office window out to the road and landscape beyond. I found myself thinking about the slowness with which paradigms of life dissipate without us noticing, and how the fragility of all things can drag us into a new sense of ourselves, and where we fit in the world. The poem is about acknowledging that fragility and our powerlessness to change it. It’s about the transformative impact a slow realization like that can have, how it can change us for the worse by taking away our wonder for this world. I want my poems to convey the idea that although we can't alter the fragility of life, we have a responsibility to work in our small ways collectively to make the experience of life as good as we are able to, while we can, for all living things. Previous AUSTIN HOLMES lives in southern Utah, where he spends life with his beloved partner and their dog. He contemplates what he can and falls in love with the sky daily anew. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue CHARYBDIS Mike Alexander I bring a load of whites—wool sacrifice, our lost cotton mesh, our warmth, sweat-stained, reptilian skins shucked off, that we replace in secret, streaked with venom, rattle-brained secretions from the grass, a tire's screech, convulsions. Working in the basement, chained, a tool bench, badly stocked, just out of reach, beside the storage bin below the stairs— I lean into the Whirlpool, adding bleach & Tide to gym socks folded into pairs, an extra change of sheets, large undershirt & underwear. In antiseptic chores, our nightmares gather strength. Like week-old dirt, our whites show the regrets, the faded vows, perpetual mortgage of a ground-in hurt. I've tried to pass for the exemplary spouse, while turning like a termite in the wood, like cracks in the foundation of the house, I feel the mortar wash away for good. I feel exposed to adder-lidded eyes. I feel the Whirlpool rocking in my blood. "Charybdis" appeared in The Weight of Addition: An Anthology of Texas Poetry (Mutabilis Press, 2007). This poem was not just an exercise in terza rima, nor a study in mythology. My marriage was breaking down; I felt hurt & was hurtful, but I wasn't able to get enough perspective to fix things. In the poem, I ended up dissecting my hysteria through some dream imagery, some rote chores — not something I started out to do — until I ended up in Rilke's "You must change your life" territory. I was a little afraid of the poem once I'd finished it, as maybe we should be with poetry. Previous MIKE ALEXANDER lives in Houston, Texas. His poems have been published in River Styx , Rattle , and Measure. He is the author of a full-length collection Retrograde (P&J Poetics, 2013), and several chapbooks, including We Internet in Different Voices (Modern Metrics Press, 2010). Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue STILL LIFE WITH FLY Shawn Dallas Stradley Two concrete strips separated and edged by weeds run between red brick walls, past a corrugated steel garage door, bare lightbulb, crooked wood door, past the weed patch of leftover space at the end of the dead end. Why there's a garage door alongside the alley is a good question, no vehicle could make such a tight turn. Raised, the door provides ventilation, natural light. Closed, it secures. Inside, two dusty double-hung six- over-six divided light windows look out to morning glory, sow thistle, other brick walls, let in muted light, cast shadows. For consistency and night, a couple of flood lights on poles provide directed light, harsh and bare, or softened with a scrim. Tea cups, angel wings, fabric, rusty train shock springs, spoiled fruit, skull––one human found in a basement among medical school training supplies, one cat found in the corner of the weed patch by the downspout, one beaver found by the river––old books, empty vodka, whiskey, wine bottles. Mason jars filled with marbles, fortunes, rocks, air, pennies, turpentine, thinner. Dolls' arms, radio tubes, bones––vertebrae, jaw, femurs from deer or cow––statues of saints, rosaries, forty-hour candles wrapped with prayers, used coffee filters, condom wrappers, a shopping cart, mannequin torso, the ball cap left by last Saturday night's trick, dead flowers. Stretched canvases lean against bare brick walls, too much accumulated amid the buzz of a single fly. The couch sags. Open beer flattens. There's not enough time to paint it all out, step back, take it all in. Turpentine rags stained crimson, violet, fern and blue, used to clean brushes, wipe up spills, unstain hands, litter the floor like jock-straps in a strip-club backroom––spontaneous, combustible. "Still Life with Fly" was published in Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art . The personal breakthrough in this poem was derived from the concept that the next thing always belongs. If that is true, then why not keep going, keep adding? So I did. I’ve always been fascinated with artists' studios, the mess, the clutter, the curiosities, all the bric-a-brac, the inspiration. To me, these spaces have always held an air of potential eroticism. It’s all so exciting? Based on my many studio visits over the years, I imagined and I wrote, and I brainstormed, and I kept writing, and adding. In this case, even the gradual increase in line length keeps building to the chaos, the clutter, the potential. After the additions though, there is always the work of revision, grammar, sentence construction, flow, enjambment. Are these tools helping to build, helping to hold together? In a "kitchen sink"-type poem, I believe they have to. Previous SHAWN DALLAS STRADLEY grew up in Utah and California. He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from BYU, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Shawn began writing poetry at age 16. His mystical fascination with the natural world weaves throughout his work, and mixes with the urban. Shawn became active in the Utah poetry scene in 1997 and published his first full-length poetry book in 2003: Beyond October (Black Rock Books). Shawn has worked with poets and artists to produce chapbooks and a collaborative catalog for the art exhibit, The 9 Muses . Two chapbooks of Shawn's poetry were published in 2025 by Moon in the Rye Press, Fragile House and a group collaboration, When Cupboards Open . His poetry has been published by City Weekly , Exit 7 , Panorama , The New Era , Nine One One , The Poeming Pigeon , and My Kitchen Table. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue TO MAKE IT NOW David Romtvedt Grandma stands in the kitchen, still alive. Her first man died in the twenties, forty years later the second went the same way. She stays alive so we celebrate another birthday halfway through her eighties the year I turn thirty. On the lawn her second son plays volleyball with his own grown children. Her eldest son, my father, watches and makes loud jokes. Like we expect when we come to this city, it rains. Everyone plays on, slightly damp. Later there’s a kind of horseshoes with giant darts and a plastic ring. We eat heavy American Food and sit in lawn chairs or on benches at borrowed tables. One grandson brings his two children but not their mother. The aunts call him brave to raise these children by himself, a man alone. Grandma loves her great-grandchildren, their tiny eyes and hands. All afternoon she drinks bourbon and water. I have made my retreat to the kitchen where I wash dishes. My aunt thanks me. Of course it is I who must give thanks. Grandma comes in wanting another drink, aware that now some whisper she shouldn’t. “But why not,” she asks, “Why shouldn’t an old lady drink if she wants?” She tells me I am good and wonders if I think it bad she drinks. I have no answer but pour out more bourbon and wash more dishes. She comes close to me and puts her arm in mine. How odd that I would grow up a poet. My mother has shown her a poem for my other grandmother, dead fifteen years before. “A lovely poem,” she says, “I had to read it twice. I didn’t understand at first how a woman could be a bird or a tree, then the second time I saw what you meant.” I am grateful to her for this and we are quiet. With so many people there are plenty of dishes. Then she says my name, tells me she too would like a poem, that would be something. Grandma sets her glass on the counter asking if I can write a poem before a person is dead? I rinse the soap off my hands and promise I will. “To Make It Now” originally appeared in the Crab Creek Review and in the book A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (Copper Canyon Press, 1992) , a selection of the National Poetry Series. Fifteen years after my maternal grandmother’s death I wrote a poem for her, which my mother sent to my paternal grandmother who then asked if I could write a poem for her, too, but before she died. I had no idea what to write and told the story of this request to an older poet I knew and admired who smiled and said, “But you see, don’t you, that’s the poem right there, the story you just told me.” In writing it down, I began to think in a new way about the making of a poem. Previous DAVID ROMTVEDT is from northern Wyoming. His most recent books are Still on Earth (LSU Press, 2025) and Forest of Ash: The Earliest Written Basque Poetry (Center for Basque Studies Press, 2024). davidromtvedt.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue AT ABU ALI Alison Moore It is late summer in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Iran and Iraq are declaring jihad , a holy war on each other, and on the day the missiles begin to rip through the air we think about being in the water. We think about swimming, pretending we're somewhere other than the Middle East for an afternoon. We drive to find a beach at Abu Ali. Giff and Ardelle sit in the front of the pickup, Dennis and Bob and I ride in the back. The little sliding window at the back of the cab is open so we can all hear the classical music hour from Radio Bahrain. Beethoven urges us forward and we leave a plume of dust behind. We can't get away fast enough, out of Jubail and the industrial project where the men work endless hours trying to carry out the erratic whims of the Saudi Royal Commission. As women in an Islamic country, Ardelle and I struggle to find ways to fill our time. We are forbidden to work, to drive a car, even to sit on the seat of a bicycle. We walk to the commissary in 125-degree heat with 100% humidity in long-sleeved, full-length kaftans, thankful at least not to be veiled. At Abu Ali we will be almost naked in bathing suits, visible if only for an afternoon, and very nearly free. We are stopped at a barricade on the narrow causeway to the island. A teenage Saudi soldier sits slouched on a tall stool in the tiny guard hut, listening to a tape of the Rolling Stones on his cassette player. He switches the music off, then saunters slowly toward our truck, scuffing across the asphalt in his dusty sandals. He grips a machine gun in his small hands. He leans down to our open window, peering in at our I.D. badges, warily comparing us to the tiny, laminated photographs on the cards. Straightening up, he flicks one of the tasseled ends of his red and white-checked shemagh over his shoulder, then waves us through with the barrel of the gun. Abu Ali is a wild, uninhabited island. Except for the road and the pipeline, there is nothing but camel grass and low dunes. Sand tracks lead off the narrow road at abrupt angles, veering to either shoreline. We pick a track at random and stop to put the truck in 4-wheel drive. We head for the dunes, growling in the lower gears. It is only a kilometer or so to the shore of the Persian Gulf. Lapping against the white sugar sand is water bluer than the stone in a Navajo ring, shimmering in the thick, humid air. We climb out, laughing and stretching. A blanket is laid down, a square of white cloth like a flag of truce on the sand. We drag our provisions to it—all the things necessary for survival: water, food, paperback novels, sunscreen. We sit down cross-legged, eating fried chicken with our bare hands, tossing the bones over the side, and guzzling iced tea until it drips down our chins. We wear an odd assortment of hats: Giff in a sailor's cap with the brim folded down, Ardelle in a safari helmet. Bob wears a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Dennis has a homemade gutra made of a white T-shirt that says "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" held on his head with a bungee cord, and I wear a frayed straw cowboy hat with a blue-black crow's feather stuck in the hatband. We gaze out over the gulf, north to Iran. When the flies begin to drive us mad, we submerge ourselves up to our shoulders in water. The tide is moving out fast, leaving us sitting in the shallows. The water is not exactly refreshing—it’s thick with salt and close to body temperature. But it lulls us, an amniotic fluid gently rocking our weightless bodies. We are so still that a large, white bird, an egret, drifts close to us on the current. Very slowly, I begin to follow it, walking my hands on the sandy bottom, trailing my legs out behind me. I move parallel to it, keeping the same languid pace, and the bird, if it notices anything at all, sees only a floating hat, which memory tells it is not a dangerous thing. I turn carefully to look over my shoulder and see the others behind me. Now the bird leads the five of us and we all move north along the shoreline as if pulled along on a string. It is the bird who breaks the silence, opening its beak to let out a shrill cry. It rises heavily, beating its spreading wings, and the sound the air makes moving through its feathers is the sound of a lasso in the wind. Its legs hang, black stalks beneath the white body, the toes like the long tines of forks dripping salty water. We watch it go, flying low over the Persian Gulf. We watch until we can't see it clearly anymore, until the white wings disappear into the wisps of black smoke that drift slowly towards us from the north, from the burning city of Abadan. Originally published in The North American Review , March 1987. I lived near Jubail, Saudi Arabia as an expat from 1980 to 1982. My husband was a photographer on contract and had spent two years there already when I joined him. Abu Ali was an uninhabited island in the Persian Gulf where we occasionally went to get away from the restrictions of living in a Muslim city not behind the walls of an American compound. This is the story of our breakaway, one day, with friends, when a bit of the Iran-Iraq War broke through. "At Abu Ali" was a breakthrough in that it was my first published piece. Previous ALISON MOORE was conceived in the caretaker’s cottage of the Harriet Beecher Stowe estate and born in Stockbridge, MA. Since then, she has traveled extensively, written and published both poetry and prose, and graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Alison is the author of four books of fiction, the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fiction fellowships, and a Dobie/Paisano fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in a vintage Spartan trailer in Driftwood, TX, with a rescue dog named Honey. substack.com/@alisonmoore Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue A HIGH SCHOOL MADRIGAL Naomi Ulsted Derek and Stephanie were in their usual eight-fifteen in the morning position: Stephanie pressed up against a bank of lockers, Derek’s hand on her ass, as they proceeded to eat one another’s faces off. At least that’s what it looked like to me. Frost clung to the grassy field beyond the lockers, but Derek and Stephanie didn’t mind the cold. I focused on getting past them and into the choir room. Slipping on a spit wad, I stumbled through the doors into Mr. M’s choir room. Unlike most of the teachers, Mr. M. opened the doors early so kids could hang out in the warmth. He rummaged through a haphazard pile of sheet music. “Morning, Mr. M.,” I called. He glanced up, giving me a distracted wave. Mr. M. was always fidgeting, rummaging, starting to review music, then jumping up to plunk notes out on the piano, then patting the pockets of his corduroy suit jacket as if searching for something, then darting into his office for his briefcase, then without opening it, returning to the pile of cluttered papers on his desk, a whirl of constant movement, anxiety, and distraction. And I loved every bit of it. In the bathroom, I checked the bandages on my shins. I was out of clean pants, so I’d had to wear a skirt, even though that meant I couldn’t hide my shins. After a massive argument, Mom had finally relented on her vow that I wouldn’t be allowed to shave my legs until I was eighteen, but she wasn’t happy about it. She had left a handwritten notecard. “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” – Proverbs 31:30. During my first shave, I’d sliced myself up good. Punishment for my vanity of wanting smooth legs. I took up my usual spot next to my best friend, Theresa. She offered me a slice of green pepper from a plastic bag. Theresa and I had basically been inseparable since second grade. We shared a locker, ate lunch together, and spent nights at each other’s houses at least a couple of times a month. I was grateful our school schedules were nearly identical because without her, I was awkward, silent, and withdrawn. In classes, surrounded by kids on the bus, or even at home with my own large and loud family, it was like I couldn’t figure out where to place myself in the scene, or what my role was. I really only fit as one half of a pair with Theresa. Mr. M. kneeled down, so his bald head was level with me. “Have you injured yourself?” His eyes darted to my legs. “Oh,” I said. “I was shaving.” I blushed. “With a machete?” He winked at me and then darted up to the front of the room as the bell sounded. I moved into my place in the front row of the soprano section. “Adams!” Mr. M. barked. “Put that lighter away before I set you on fire with it!” John Adams was several rows behind me, and as I turned, he threw a wad of paper at Stacy, whose hair flipped back as she swore at him, laughing. Stacy and her senior friends were loud girls who wore heavy eye makeup and talked about “partying,” and I was quite sure they weren’t virgins. They used profanity, which I figured was an indicator. John’s hair was long and flopped into his eyes, which were such a light and gentle blue that they were nearly transparent. I had fallen for him the day I walked behind him while he sang “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions. He was a senior and had only said possibly ten words to me, and those were words like, “Hand me that pencil, will ya?” Yet, there was something I loved in the sincerity of his singing and the earnestness of his face as he tried to pick out the tenor melody. “Jasmine!” Mr. M. hollered. “Give us an E.” Our foreign exchange student from Brazil, who had perfect pitch, sang out an exquisite E note. It was only during choir that we heard Jasmine’s voice. She was painfully shy otherwise. Much like me, but without the benefit of a best friend. She almost always had her nose in a textbook and she never laughed. Mr. M. closed his eyes, savoring Jasmine’s clear voice, then raised his arms, and without taking roll, without greeting the class, and without preamble, he launched us into our first madrigal of the day, “My Heart Doth Beg.” Mr. M. had a fondness for fifteenth-century madrigals. They presented four parts moving within one another, forcing us to pull together the frayed ends of our harmonies. When we were so bored with “My Heart Doth Beg” that we pleaded for a different madrigal, he’d have us learn one another’s parts until we could see how the piece was complete with the four lines interwoven. As usual, I wanted Mr. M. to know how well I’d learned my part. I was desperate to be heard and to stand out in his mind as someone special. Contradicting my mousy and withdrawn self, my voice could be wild and out of control, demanding attention. I belted out my part, but I was clearly overzealous or off-pitch because I immediately got “the hand.” When a singer was too loud or off-key, Mr. M. would raise his palm toward them. If the singer didn’t back off, he’d get closer until, if you were in the front row like me, the hand could be right in your face while Mr. M. crinkled up his own face in what could only be physical pain caused by atrocious sounds coming from your own voice. That’s what I got now, and I forced my voice into a near whisper. My failure still stung at the end of the period as Mr. M. reviewed our upcoming trip's details. The following week, the choir would take an overnight trip to perform at a middle school a few hours away. At home, this event had been preceded by multiple conversations with my mother, where it took all my persuasive arguments to get her to sign the permission form. She did not think it appropriate for girls and boys to be spending the night together, even though I explained, not so patiently, that we would all be on a gigantic gymnasium floor with the girls on one side and the boys on the other. Plus, there would be tons of chaperones, so it’s not like people would even have the chance to be fornicating. Well, Derek and Stephanie would probably figure something out, but I didn’t mention that. Finally, after promising to attend church on both Sunday and Wednesday nights the weeks before and after the trip so my Christian defenses would be ready for whatever temptations the choir trip would bring, she agreed to let me go. Theresa and I were beside ourselves with excitement, spending most of our time talking about which of our classmates would be the most fun to ride with on the bus. For Theresa, I knew that it was Bob Dietz. As we left the choir room, he swaggered in front of us, swinging his bangs out of his eyes. In a “secret” survey passed around the school last year, Bob’s ass had been voted the best in the junior class. The great divide between the junior and sophomore classes wasn’t the only thing keeping Theresa from talking to him, though. He had been voted Junior homecoming prince and was forever surrounded by his pack of popular kids. In the social hierarchy of high school, Theresa and I weren’t at the bottom, but we were nowhere close enough to the top to be allowed to speak to Bob. He was just as out of reach for her as John was for me. So we just kept to our own world and watched from a distance. We boarded the bus a week later as early morning mist rose from the grass and floated over the baseball field. The parking lot was empty except for cars belonging to upperclassmen. My dad had dropped me off on his way to work after we’d spent the forty-five-minute drive in silence. I’d glanced at him through the window as he pulled away, but it was dark, and he was shadowy behind it. It was the way things were with us. Theresa and I found a seat in front of Tim Anderson, who had already fallen asleep, his head resting against the seat in front of him. It was warm and quiet inside, and nearly everyone dozed. When I woke, Tim was placing tiny paper airplanes on my head. Theresa whispered he’d been doing this for several minutes. I was mildly flattered, but Tim was even lower in the hierarchy than we were. He wore jeans hiked up high on his waist, yet they seemed to be drawn downward, and when he bent over to pick up his duffel bag, I would see more of Tim than I wanted. “Knock it off,” I said, flicking the airplanes away. “Hey, Mr. M.’s telling a story.” Up in the front section of the bus, I could see Mr. M.’s bald head scrunching up and his hands gesticulating wildly. I knew right away he was telling the snowball story. Theresa and I made our way up front, and soon, a group of us was squeezing three or four bodies into the seats closest to him. Mr. M. told our class a story about once a week, although we begged for one every day. “Tell us about the loogie in the sandwich!” we’d say, or “Tell us about the one when the cow gets shot.” He repeated his stories often, which no one minded because his telling of them was so detailed and full that we felt like we were living it anew each time. Sometimes, his stories stung with sadness, and we’d file out of the choir room subdued and foggy, distractedly making our way to our next classroom. More often, though, his stories were full of tiny details that left us rolling with laughter. Mr. M. opened his eyes comically wide as he described the truck driver’s eyes as the snowball barreled toward him. He ducked from view behind his seat to show how the driver disappeared when the snowball hit its target. By now, our group had grown, so seniors, freshmen, and everyone in between were squashed together around him. A couple hours later, we stood in a close semi-circle in the school’s gymnasium. It was an hour until our performance, but Mr. M. wanted to hear the acoustics. We focused on him as he pulled us in tighter, pleading with us to listen to one another, hear one another’s parts, and remember what the song was about. Mr. M. always made us dissect the madrigal’s lyrics, pushing us to feel the passions of the fifteenth century. “Live it!” he would shout. I sang with zeal, watching him for signs that I should back off or, hopefully, sing more enthusiastically. Theresa was across the semi-circle from me, and I could usually pick out her part, but this time, I could only catch it faintly. I grasped my own part and sang confidently until Mr. M. gave me the hand, and I knew I’d blown it again. Defeated, I headed to the locker room with the rest of the girls. Theresa had gone ahead of us, and I looked for her as I stood in the mirrors, my reflection small and childlike next to Kathy and her perfect hair and makeup. “Hey, Steph!” Kathy shouted. “Let me borrow your eyeliner, bitch!” “Only if you twist my titties!” There was raucous laughter, and the eyeliner flew above several heads to Kathy. I recognized Theresa’s shoes under the stall and knocked. “Are you okay?” “My stomach hurts.” Theresa opened the door and sat down on the bench. She was white. “Do you have the flu?” “I guess,” she said. “I don’t know.” “Are you going to sing?” I asked. “Do you want me to tell Mr. M. you can’t?” “No.” She was unusually closed-lipped. My hands lay helplessly in my lap as if they didn’t know what to do. But as we walked on stage, it felt like every one of those middle-schoolers was clapping for me. Jasmine’s soft doe eyes locked with Mr. M.’s, and she sang out our starting note. I watched Mr. M. and I lived the lyrics, and I barely noticed anything else. Until partway through the second song, when Theresa quietly walked off stage as if she had a pre-arranged appointment. As I watched her disappear into the locker room, I faltered and lost my part. Mr. M.’s eyes had followed her, but now he scowled at me, and I struggled to re-find my place. After the performance, I found Theresa doubled over the bathroom stall, full-on sobbing. “I think you need to get someone.” We waited in the emergency room for what seemed like an eternity. The chaperone who had driven us had returned to the gymnasium, as we were evidently understaffed after all, and there was a major concern that without proper chaperoning, there would be fornication or drinking. The chaperone had already asked a couple of pointed questions about whether Theresa might be pregnant and seemed doubtful when Theresa had adamantly shaken her head. I had never been in an emergency room and was surprised at the amount of sitting and doing nothing involved. A middle-aged woman read Cosmopolitan as she waited. The cover advertised an article about the “10 Sexiest Things for Celebrities.” I wondered if that was different than the 10 Sexiest Things for Derek and Stephanie. Theresa rocked back and forth without talking, her head down. Every time the nurse entered, I was sure her name would be called, but it was not. Tears were dropping onto Theresa’s arms she had clutched around her middle. I went to the front desk, staffed by a woman with dull eyes. “My friend has been waiting a long time.” “We’re just a little busy right now,” she replied. “We’ll get to her as soon as possible.” I felt a twist of panic. I gripped the counter. “Something is really wrong with her. She’s not pregnant, she’s not on drugs. She needs to be seen right now. If she isn’t taken care of now, I don’t know what is going to happen.” My voice broke then, and embarrassingly, I stood at the counter and cried. But I saw a little life flicker in this woman’s eyes, and she went into the back. A minute later, she returned. “We’ll see your friend now.” I didn’t see Theresa again until she was in the recovery room following her appendectomy. Her skin was still pale, and her hospital gown lay sloppily, exposing her shoulder. I looked down, and the black and white tiles of the floor began to rush up toward me, and then there was a nurse holding my head down in between my knees. When I could stand, she guided me out of the room. I arrived back at the gymnasium long after our classmates had stopped laughing, shouting, and trying to sneak over to the other side of the gym. Theresa’s parents had offered to let me stay with them at the hotel and return home when Theresa could leave the hospital, but I had chosen to continue the tour. I still wanted to sing. But now, standing in the dark, listening to snores and trying to see which lump was my own waiting sleeping bag, I wished I had gone with them. I was relieved when Mr. M. appeared to guide me to my bag. As we made our way through sleeping bodies on the floor, I wanted to tell him the whole story. I wanted him to know how scared I’d been. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to hug me. But as soon as we were at my spot on the floor, he said, “Get some sleep,” and disappeared. I wondered where John was. Even Tim would have been a welcome conversationalist. But no one appeared. On the bus the next day, I sat in the seat with Jasmine as we drove down the highway. I was exhausted and felt out of place without Theresa. I leaned my head against the bus window. “What kind of music do you listen to?” Jasmine’s voice startled me. It may have been the longest sentence I’d ever heard her speak. “Only madrigals?” “Um, no. I don’t really listen to madrigals outside of choir.” We talked, working slowly through her struggles with English. I noticed that she laughed easily, just quietly. She wasn’t serious at all. I saw John making his way to the front of the bus to listen to Mr. M.’s stories. “He walks like, what do you call it? A big spider,” Jasmine said, mimicking his swinging arms. “You aren’t like I thought,” I said. “I thought you studied all the time.” “I just never have anyone to talk to.” Just then, Stacy plopped into the seat in front of us on her knees, her chin resting on her hands as she looked at us. “Hey,” she said. “Hi,” I offered. I couldn’t imagine what Stacy wanted with us. “You want a Twinkie?” She held a Twinkie out toward me. “They gave them to us last night and you missed out. I got an extra, though, so you want it?” “Okay,” I took the Twinkie. “Thanks.” “That must have sucked last night.” Stacy’s heavily lined eyes were kind. Right now, she didn’t really seem like a wild and promiscuous partier. Even if she did swear and use bad words. “God,” she said. “Where are we even going?” The bus was taking a detour. Mr. M. knew of a church with good acoustics in one of the tiny towns the freeway blew past. He’d arranged for us to have access to the sanctuary. Inside the domed church, sunlight shone through stained glass windows, and a quiet reverence filled the space, silencing our jokes and laughter as we filed into the center of the sanctuary beneath the high domed ceiling. The only audience member was a church secretary sitting in the back pew. Mr. M. drew us into a huddle and placed his finger over his lips. He waited until we were completely silent and then raised his hand to Jasmine for the starting note. The sound was incredible. It rang up and throughout the dome, bouncing from one angled section of the roof to another. One full measure later, as I began my second soprano part, I could still hear the ringing of the first note. The sound swelled through the room and seemed to move around and between us, even as we stood shoulder to shoulder. I closed my eyes and heard Jasmine’s first soprano dancing across the melody. Stephanie’s deep alto voice established strength and consistency. Kathy’s second soprano sang a note slightly under mine, and I recognized it as truer, so I matched it. John’s tenor played off the melody, and I heard the desire in it. I missed Theresa’s alto, but Tim’s bass struck a confident chord that anchored me. I listened and let my voice blend with the others. I realized I hadn’t been watching Mr. M. and no longer needed his gestures and facial expressions. Together, our voices wrapped around each other and became something beyond our own individual wishes, our loneliness, our restlessness, our confidences and confusions, and rang out; our voices rose up and into the dome of the church, then outside past the school bus and outside over the fields into the clear, clean air. When the last note stopped ringing, I opened my eyes to Mr. M beaming. He pointed a long finger at me. “Yes!” he said, “Yes.” “A High School Madrigal” has looked for the right home for many years. It was one of the first chapters I wrote in my memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest , forthcoming from High Frequency Press. During one of thousands of revisions, I removed it because it didn’t fit in the book's arc. However, I still love this story about belonging. High School is such an interesting time when you define who you are while you find the space where you fit. The breakthrough I had, where for a moment I stopped seeing people through their differences, but instead, through what we were as a whole, was pivotal for me. Previous NAOMI ULSTED writes fiction, non-fiction, and stage plays. She’s the author of the YA novel The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021). Her memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest, will be published in the fall of 2026 by High Frequency Press. She lives on the southern coast of Oregon. naomiulsted.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue TIP Marjorie Maddox of the tongue not tickling the undiscovered decay; of the finger, stubbed into silence; of the #2 pencil, poised and pointed, suddenly stifled, its nonpoisonous lead unable to undo any tabula rasa—mine or yours or my mother’s, who keeps asking with the tongue and the finger and the blank slate of her almost ninety-year-old face, “How old? How old?” How old this silence that faces the poised, the stubbed mother tongue— yours, mine—blank as any tabula rasa before words knew how to rise, or fingers how to point at the poisonous, the decayed, or merely the undiscovered hiding behind the stifled face, ninety #2 pencils unable to answer such sudden questions. How to answer what tickles the stubbed mind, undo the poisonous—yours, mine— face the tabula rasa without pencil or tongue, the blank of silence its own discovery of decay, the pointed “How old? How old?” suddenly stifled, leading back to the undoing: blank slate where ninety keeps asking after itself as the finger points in question, and the poised tongue raises again its unanswered Tip "Tip" was previously published in Southern Florida Poetry Review and in the poetry collection Seeing Things (Wildhouse, 2025). This poem, the first I wrote during a Fall 2018 writing residency, tumbled out the evening that I arrived, the process “tipping” me into a “tip of the tongue” space that writing often pushes through. This time, the process provided insight into the early stages of my mother’s dementia. What, I wondered, did it feel like to her when words became evasive at a more extreme level than common “tip of the tongue” syndrome? “Tip” thus paved the way to other poems on dementia, caregiving, and the shifting roles of memory that eventually became the book Seeing Things (Wildhouse, Feb. 2025). Previous MARJORIE MADDOX has published 17 collections of poetry, a story collection, five children’s and YA books, and two anthologies (co-editor). She is a Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven Campus of Commonwealth University. marjoriemaddox.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue GLAMOUR SHOTS Naomi Ulsted I had spent my morning fantasizing about the UPS guy. He had thick dark hair and a natural smile, and he usually arrived at the office around ten in the morning. While booking reservations at La Quinta hotels across Texas for the children’s theatre show I worked with, I made sure I was in the front office in case he was just running late. After lunch, I gave up and was in the back room reorganizing our costumes when I heard the door open. I draped my sparkling green witch costume over an office chair and darted to the front, ignoring the office manager’s disapproving look. She didn’t care for me bolting in or out of rooms. She pursed her lips as I slugged back Gatorade, suffering from the after-effects of an evening dancing down on Sixth Street. My new life in Austin was days of bland mediocrity punctuated by dancing on Sixth Street and the UPS guy’s arrival. Sadly, it was only a salesman selling Glamour Shots from the mall. So maybe I bought them because I was consoling myself about the UPS guy. Or maybe because the office manager sniffed with disdain as I reviewed the package they were offering: a professional sitting that included makeup and dress for up to three people and one eight by ten print, all for a flat rate of sixty dollars. I handed over my credit card. It’s not like I was dying for a photoshoot. I hadn’t wanted to be a model since I was twelve, but my little sisters were coming to visit. They were eleven and thirteen years old, and I’d convinced our mom to let them fly from Oregon to Texas to spend two weeks with me. I imagined us dressed to kill, looking sophisticated and elegant. I felt very adult as I tucked my credit card away and returned to my shimmering costumes. I picked Leah and Tanya up from the airport, where the three of us crammed into the cab of my pick-up truck and let their suitcases slide across the bed. We stayed up late drinking root beer and feeling our way back to the comfortable rapport we’d had before I moved away. Tanya, the eleven-year-old, sat on my only piece of furniture, a large papasan chair. She curled her tiny self into the nest of it, eating microwave popcorn from the bag. Leah and I sprawled on the floor, our root beer bottles sitting on a square block that had been part of a book display at Barnes and Noble, where I’d worked before the theatre job. It served as my dining room table. The soles of Leah’s feet were thick and calloused. She rarely wore shoes, preferring to toughen her feet on the unforgiving terrain of southern Oregon, priding herself on her ability to walk on the thistles that grew rampant across thirsty dirt. “So, how are things with Rick and Mom?” I asked. Our mom had married Rick a couple of years ago. When I came to visit, I rarely stayed for more than a couple of nights. Rick was snide and derogatory toward me. I hated him for being in my sisters’ lives. “He’s an asshole,” Tanya said immediately. “They fight all the time,” Leah said. “As if you even hear it,” Tanya said to her. “You just hide in your barn all the time.” Leah kept vast quantities of animals, including goats, rabbits, and sheep. She secretly housed and fed a black widow spider in a jar in a dark corner of the barn. “He eats mayonnaise from the container,” Tanya said as if that ended any and all discussion of our stepdad’s character. Which, in some ways, it did. “Screw him,” Leah said. “He said I was mean to my animals and told me I’d never be a veterinarian.” Tanya curled up even smaller. “He told me I probably wouldn’t graduate from high school. He said statistics prove it.” “What statistics?” I asked. “Girls from,” and she raised her fingers in quotations, “lower economic backgrounds .” She gestured to my barren studio apartment. “I can’t wait to live on my own.” I had two bachelor's degrees and spent my days researching La Quinta and waiting for the UPS guy. On performance nights, I wore my glittering witch costume and danced on stage, expertly twirling my witch’s broom. But performance nights were only a few times a month, and the rest of the time, it was just mediocre old me. Austin wasn’t cheap and once I’d paid for rent, I usually only had enough left for food and liquor. I had a refrigerator with cheese, dill pickles, and Shiner Bock beer. A recent photo of myself showed thin legs and too prominent shoulder bones. Weak and brittle. “It’s not all that,” I said. On the day of our Glamour Shots, we made our way through the mall. My sisters’ reaction to my big photoshoot idea was underwhelming. Grudgingly, Leah had put on shoes for the trip. Tanya asked if we could go to the arcade instead. I tried to make up for it with my own false enthusiasm. “It’s going to be fun,” I bubbled as we navigated through crowds of girls wearing crop tops who laughed loudly at jokes made by boys who sauntered as if they knew their place at the top of the hierarchy of mall goers. Which they did. As we passed by a group of girls emerging from J.J. Jeans with packages dangling from their arms, one of them narrowed her eyes at Leah’s overalls and sneakers. She nudged her friend and giggled. Leah reddened, shoving her hands further into her pockets. “Oh, look,” Tanya said, glancing toward the girls. “There’s a sale on Barbies.” I had imagined Glamour Shots would be located in a posh studio, but this place had as much elegance as the Standard Optical shop next door. The receptionist wore pancake makeup and long false lashes. She raked her eyes over us as if overwhelmed by the exhausting task before her. “Okay,” she said in a tired voice. “We’ll get you dressed.” We had been encouraged to bring our own clothes, but since all we had were overalls, jeans, and sweatshirts, we’d decided to choose from their wardrobe. We squeezed into the dressing room and rifled through our options. Too many sequins. Too much gold lamé. The receptionist-turned-stylist held a leather dress toward me with six inches of fringe hanging from the bodice. I shook my head. Tanya pulled out a red denim dress cut scandalously low, raising her eyebrows. Leah stared blankly at the racks of clothes as if someone were speaking in Swahili to her. Feeling the whole adventure was going sideways, I began yanking dresses out and holding them up to her. “Try this velvet one,” I pleaded. What if they never wanted to visit me again? What if they went home feeling worse than when they got here? What if the UPS guy never came back? What if I never did anything but call LaQuinta so I could pay another month’s rent? What if my sisters started to believe Rick? What if the statistics were right? Finally, we settled on three black dresses. They were cut lower than I’d like for us, but this was Glamour Shots, so we didn’t have much choice. My dress sagged around my thin frame, so the stylist tightened it by fastening it in the back with a binder clip. Tanya stuffed wads of toilet paper into her bra to help fill out her dress. Leah refused to put her shoes on, and the stylist finally relented since they wouldn’t be in the photograph. She hiked up her dragging skirt as she padded toward the hair station. There was hairspray, thick foundation too dark for our skin, more hairspray, contouring, shading, more hairspray, a thick coating of mascara, bright red lipstick, and then we were done. My face felt like it was a pound heavier. Leah coughed her way toward me through a final cloud of hairspray. Tanya looked like a child prostitute. I thought I might have seen our photographer doing Jello shots on Sixth Street. His wavy hair fell over one eye, making me wonder if it would impair his photography skills. He hoisted a blank screen behind us and situated us close together. A strand of Tanya’s hair got in my mouth, and I tasted chemicals. The photographer squeezed us together. As he moved Leah into place, she reached behind me to steady herself on the stool, accidentally brushing her arm against Tanya’s face. Her arm came away with a smear of makeup. Tanya tried to inch her way behind me to hide her cleavage, but the photographer kept pulling her back out. The lights were hotter than stage lights, and I wondered if all this makeup was going to slide down my neck. The camera began to click as we tried to maintain the awkward stances he’d shoved us into. “Okay, now smile,” he said. We tried. “Close-mouthed smile this time, Ladies. Give me some sexy!” Leah’s grip on the stool slipped, and she stumbled out of view. The photographer glanced at his watch. “Come on, ladies, show us your glamour!” We tried for glamour. We smiled with closed mouths. We smiled with wide-open grins. He turned on the fan so our hair wafted behind us in gentle waves. Tanya sneezed. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let me take a look.” I felt a small wave of nausea in the heat of the lights. I wondered what to do tonight to keep my sisters from getting bored. “Hmm,” the photographer said as he studied the photos in his camera. “Your eye,” he said to me. “You’re kind of blinking.” He brought the camera to me so I could see the small photos. My right eye wasn’t open as wide as the left. I wasn’t actually blinking, but it was definitely noticeable. “Let’s try a few more,” he said. Leah sighed as we arranged ourselves again, trying to be glamorous and seductive and elegant once more. He snapped a few pictures and then checked them in the camera. “Same problem,” he said. The receptionist joined our group, and the five of us peered into the camera at my stubbornly drooping right eye. “That’s one unglamorous eye,” Leah said. “Can you try opening it wider?” the receptionist suggested. So, for the next round of clicks, I concentrated on opening my right eye wide. When the photographer checked the shots, his brow furrowed, and he glanced at his watch again. “Well, I think that’s what we’re going to get,” he said. “You can view the final photos at the kiosk out front.” “I can’t wait to get this shit off my face,” Tanya said as she removed the toilet paper from her bra. Leah unclipped my binder for me, and I hung the dress up. I felt a pinching and a sudden urge to cry. My stupid eye. Ruined the whole thing. We gathered around the kiosk monitor to view the final photos. “I look like a porn star,” Leah said. Her cleavage was pushing up, and as she had been leaning awkwardly, one boob especially was getting a lot of exposure. “You could have a new career ahead of you,” Tanya said. We flipped to another photo where Tanya leered into the camera seductively. She was drama and sex. She was striking. She was a child beauty pageant nightmare. And then, photo after photo of us dealing with my eye. It drooped and sagged. The photos where I tried to open it were worse. My eyebrow raised, but my eyelid sagged even further. My left eye tried to compensate by opening wide as if I was shocked. My expression was pained and stressed. My teeth were bared in a strained smile. “You look like you’re peeing your pants.” “You look like you just stuck a fork in a light socket.” “You look like you have a massive wedgie.” “You look like you just walked in on Mom and Rick having sex.” As we flipped through the photographs, we began to laugh and couldn’t stop. Tanya laughed so that tears cut through her pancake makeup. The stylist-turned-receptionist gave a withering glare, but we laughed so hard that customers at Standard Optical stopped trying on glasses and squinted our way. Leah gripped the monitor to steady herself, bent over in hysterics. “Oh, look,” I said as I flipped through the photos. “It’s the double child hookers and their very surprised pimp.” “I need double copies of each one,” Leah said. “This was totally worth the toil of putting on all this makeup.” “We are such trouble together,” Tanya said. The three of us huddled around the monitor, cackling so that our laughter rang up and past the annoyed receptionist and through the mall, casting its spell, causing workers and shoppers to stop and look around curiously. I took out my credit card and bought $150 worth of prints. Back in our normal clothes, with our voluminous hair still sprayed into place, we headed into the mall. We passed Jordache and Guess, and Versace. Every now and then, we’d take a photo from the package and burst into laughter all over again, stumbling and crashing into each other as we howled. Mall girls moved out of our way. A man trying to give out face cream samples called to us, but I silenced him with a glare from my evil right eye. We bought candy apples and strode down the middle of the aisle in our coven, and as we crunched through the red shells with our sharp teeth, my empty apartment, our stepdad’s words, and every statistic holding us back disappeared before us like wisps of smoke in moonlight. “Glamour Shots” was originally published in the blog Sacred Chickens in February of 2021. This is one of my favorite memories of my sisters. It happened soon after I’d left home, glad to be free of the challenges of childhood. However, on my own, I felt powerless in a different way as I struggled to pay the rent or do anything “interesting” with my life. That day, with my sisters, I felt that together, we could take on the world. Rise above the world’s expectations for us. That breakthrough, that feeling of power, gives me strength still. Previous NAOMI ULSTED writes fiction, non-fiction, and stage plays. She’s the author of the YA novel The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021). Her memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest, will be published in the fall of 2026 by High Frequency Press. She lives on the southern coast of Oregon. naomiulsted.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue AT THE END OF OCTOBER Dennise Gackstetter All day I worked to ready the garden for winter, kneeling on the earth to trim spent seed heads and crispy curled leaves, bowing low to cut brittle stems and browned stalks close to the ground. From far overhead I hear sandhill cranes call to each other in flight, their harmonic clicks and whirrs and bugles traveling through the clear expanse of sky. I leaned back and turned my eyes upward, but I did not see them. I stood and searched across the brilliant blue and still, I did not see them. Standing amidst untidy piles of plant debris saturated in sunlight, I continued to listen long after their voices faded away. This poem expresses the deep reverence I have for the world in all the ways it reveals itself, and in all the ways I can meet it. It stands as a breakthrough for me because I successfully engaged the power of narrative in a prose poem. My poet friend, Star Coulbrooke, called this a strong example of “incantatory prose.”Through sound, rhythm, and repetition, I conjure deep sensuous qualities that invite the reader to share in the visceral magic of the moment. Previous DENNISE GACKSTETTER is an artist, educator, and writer whose courage and curiosity have taken her to many places across the world and around her own backyard. In all her creative practices, she celebrates the levity and gravity of wonder and connection. She and her husband live happily in Logan, Utah. dennisegclayworks.com Next