Andrea Hollander < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Living Room Andrea Hollander 00:00 / 02:12 Living Room Andrea Hollander In the cave of memory my father crawls now, his small carbide light fixed to his forehead, his kneepads so worn from the journey they’re barely useful, but he adjusts them again and again. Sometimes he arches up, stands, reaches, measures himself against the wayward height of the ceiling, which in this part of the cave is at best uneven. He often hits his head. Other times he suddenly stoops, winces, calls out a name, sometimes the pet name he had for my long-dead mother or the name he called his own. That’s when my stepmother tries to call him back. Honeyman , she says, one hand on his cheek, the other his shoulder, settling him into the one chair he sometimes stays in. There are days she discovers him curled beneath the baby grand, and she’s learned to lie down with him. I am here , she says, her body caved against this man who every day deserts her. Bats , he says, or maybe, field glasses . Perhaps he’s back in France, 1944, she doesn’t know. But soon he’s up again on his knees, shushing her, checking his headlamp, adjusting his kneepads, and she rises to her own knees, she doesn’t know what else to do, the two of them explorers, one whose thinning pin of light leads them, making their slow way through this room named for the living. Previously published in RUNES , and winner of the RUNES Poetry Prize, selected by Jane Hirshfield, "Living Room" is included in my third full-length collection, Woman in the Painting (Autumn House, 2006) and in Landscape with Female Figure: New and Selected Poems, 1982 - 2012 (Autumn House, 2013.) Witnessing my father's years-long death from Alzheimer's was overwhelmingly heartbreaking, but observing his wife's unwavering care for him during those sad, difficult twelve years gave me unexpected peace; her compassion and deep love were motivations for this poem. Though I'd written about his disease in other poems, not until I found the perfect analogy of spelunking (a breakthrough), was I able to create this poem that honors both my father and my stepmother. Previous ANDREA HOLLANDER is the author of six full-length poetry collections and has received number awards, including two Pushcart Prizes for poetry and literary non-fiction, and two fellowships from the National Endownment for the Arts. Next

Lauren Camp < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Poem Approaching Four Past Tenses Lauren Camp 00:00 / 01:53 Poem Approaching Four Past Tenses Lauren Camp Later agrees to be the change of subject. On Thursday a fever adored him and then it didn’t, and now it does again. His soft bit of electric hair. His erasing. Two days more and fluid is swimming his lungs. How still we are. Invisible in the soon or very soon. The day nurse gets up, props him up, and up and up in bed, and hums and nests a white towel across him. Obedient oxygen accedes through a tube as a current and I want him to sing to me. A riff from Sinatra, a prayer. His breathing lands in even froth, the whoosh and pecking. I understand it. Or how long I have been making a life in his shadow. First day of spring and brooches of green. I speak close and loose, all calm exits versed beyond our past knots which still halve my mind. I make up the difference of his loyal not talking. I daughter. I squirm. I shape words into harmonics and within each scale a proverb. I watch his hands gesture. His mouth doesn’t know questions. Here I am watching some edge of being apart to being farther apart. A hot pink sun comes in urgent to land. It’s interesting to me to look through my drafts of this poem that deal with the end of a life, the actual final days or moments. I changed the title four times, looking to recalibrate my thinking. The poem went through a number of other revisions, too, though “past tense” was there from the start. At one point, I got more interested in exploring that term, and discovered there are four past tenses. This gave me a new way to consider a subject so close to my heart. Previous LAUREN CAMP serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight books of poetry. www.laurencamp.com Next

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Stacy Julin < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Almost Stacy Julin 00:00 / 00:46 Almost Stacy Julin If not for God and penicillin, life would have been hours long. As a moth lives, young and oblivious. Dreams, ambitions – like the snowflakes, were too delicate on a window. Melting before I could touch them. The watching stars must have made bets, popped popcorn to watch those almost-moments, like a predictable football game. If I could see it laid out, with the warning of big bumps, like a topographical map, I might hide underground in fear of the coming. Better to be like the moth, who flies in the light, not knowing. Published in The Southern Quill . In the process of writing this poem, I started to realize how important it is that we don't know our future. We are living at our best, and not living "in fear of the coming." Previous STACY JULIN'S work has been published in Oyster River Pages , Pirene’s Fountain , Sweet Tree Review , Southern Quill , and Word Fountain , and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, A Pebble Thrown in Water (Tiger’s Eye Press, 2010), Visiting Ghosts and Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Things We Carry (Finishing Line Press, 2024). She lives with her family at the base of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. Next

Jamison Conforto < Back to Breakthroughs Issue boy Jamison Conforto 00:00 / 01:26 boy Jamison Conforto When I was a boy it was just the two of us under that hot Utah summer sun, blazing high the smell of rain and warm rabbitbrush heaven a synonym for him, for afternoon And when I was a boy clinging to the fence watching my best friend run away in real time smaller and smaller through the wheat until I couldn't pick him out from the horizon And when I was a boy crying in my bed wishing with all my heart that I had gone with him disappeared together into the wheat instead of picking the coward's way of things I'm no longer a boy crying for the dead but I still think of what could have been if I had traveled through that rabbitbrush if we had run away together when we had time "boy" is a true story from my youth, when I watched my best friend run away. That day has been a landmark event in my past and a keystone of my inspiration for as long as I can remember, so to finally be able to put it into words is a breakthrough for me personally. I like to think the layers of resonance between the stanzas is a breakthrough in the development of my poetic technique as well. Previous JAMISON CONFORTO is a writer from the Salt Lake Valley. You can follow his poem-a-day journey at @the_year_365_in_365 on Instagram. Next

Send us your verses, poems, prose, fiction, nonfiction, essays, and book reviews. Our next theme is " MUSIC " THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine dedicated to writers, and to building a community enthralled by what can be conveyed through words. We publish writing to delight you! THE NOMAD publishes two online issues and one print edition annually, and nominates work for Pushcart Prizes and other awards. Submissions for the 2025 theme of "breakthroughs" are now closed. The theme for 2026 will be "Music" and work can be submitted through Submittable until April 30, 2026. We thank you in advance and look forward to reading your work!

July for Dylan, April 20, 1989 - July 7, 2013 by Shanan Ballam April isn’t the cruelest month. That would be July, the month you died, when asphalt gleamed heat and construction cones lined the lanes on the break-neck freeway— I slumped in the back like a sack of trash as our sisters and I raced tear-blind to the scene, bodies flung side-to-side as we whipped in and out of traffic, tires screeching, only to stand stunned, worthless, gagged with Dad’s cigarette smoke— oh—I can still hear him sobbing in the scorching garage. In April, crocus spear through soil, open pale purple, thin as tissue paper, lacewings luxuriating in the saffron like cats rolling on their backs in the sun. In April, the lilacs’ tiny blossoms, hard as oysters, begin to soften, and when they open, iridescent frills the color of pearls, their fragrance drifting through the windows, sheer curtains shimmering. Maybe if I’d called you to say I’m worried, I love you, You could have said Help me. Dad won’t. In the cement basement I saw the message you scrawled on the wall: Why won’t it rain? I saw your self-portrait in black spray paint. You blacked-out your own awful eyes. The anniversary creeps closer, hobbled, like a baby buggy with one wheel missing. July is cruelest because I still must drive past the hospital where the doctor pronounced you dead, past the chapel, its gold and crimson windows, past the Wal-Mart and the Maverik where you bought your beer and cigarettes, past the woman with the dead baby’s footprints tattooed on her breast, and down there near the tracks: sagebrush, vodka bottles, and a single sego lily, basin blushed ruby red. Oh July—you emergency! July with your wildfire heart. But I drive past the field silvered with sprinkler mist where the two painted horses bend their graceful faces to the grass, their black manes shining in the falling sun, shining like your black hair in the obituary picture. This time I’ll stop the car, and we will walk to horses who know only this emerald field, its musky soil, know only the sky spreading its deep indigo, and we’ll pull up clumps of silky grass. See how they move toward us, bodies glistening as the day disintegrates. Together we'll touch the sleek gloss of their manes, their velveteen noses, see deep into peace, their wet ebony eyes. We'll stand together in the lavender light as the horses pull sweet grass from our hands. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue My youngest brother Dylan Thomas drank himself to death at age 24. This poem is my favorite unpublished piece because it takes so many surprising turns and utilizes different tones—panic and calm. It contains surprising comparisons: the anniversary of his death compared to a baby buggy with one wheel missing and comparing July to a wildfire. I like how it contrasts April and July—extreme heat and early, raw spring—and uses connotations from Eliot’s famous poem, “The Wasteland.” .................................................................................................................................................................................... SHANAN BALLAM is the author of the poetry manuscripts The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability, 2013), Inside the Animal (Main Street Rag, 2019), and the chapbook first poems after the stroke (Finishing Line Press, 2024). shananballam.org Next - Missa Brevis by Kimberly Johnson Next

Robert Okaji < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Relentless Robert Okaji 00:00 / 00:50 Relentless Robert Okaji In my youth I might have stayed there, drinking beer until the cows came in or someone started a fight. But today, one pint and a Caesar salad was all I needed. Then I limped back to the hotel, made a cup of strong coffee, and wrote. What is the point, I ask. Nobody answers, which is, of course, the point. No one hears those fallen trees and poets, except the trees and poets. The cancer is spreading. Thus far I've managed to dodge most of the indignities inherent in this illness. But they're coming. Oh, they're coming. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness some sixteen months ago. Thanks to the wonders of modern science, I'm still here, still breathing, still writing, for Pete's sake! What's the point of it? Who cares? Does anyone? What's the point of anything? But still, I continue doing what I'm doing—writing—sometimes painfully, with a little less grace, and slowly, grudgingly, because it's what I do. It's who I am. Previous ROBERT OKAJI has late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review , Vox Populi and other venues. Next

I'd Rather Be Influenced by Patrick Ramsay to send more postcards. To kiss with more tongue and let cantaloupe juice run all the way down to my elbows. I’d rather be influenced to cook more quiche and make cold brew at home. To wake up early and stay in bed. To be better at remembering my friends’ birthdays. To vote early. I want an algorithm that worships heirloom tomatoes. The sound of that one summer cricket outside my window. Peach sorbet with tiny spoons. The way the mountains go copper at dusk. The chatter of your dog laughing in a dream across the room. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue First published in Gwarlingo , "The Sunday Poem." This poem marked the beginning of a new season in my writing. It emerged when I felt like I was finally settling into my life in Utah after years away. More importantly, I was settling into my own voice as a poet. I was slowing down. Whispering instead of yawping. I was making the case for a slower life, one where influencers focus their attention on unsellable glimmers of life beyond the algorithm. James Crews featured it as The Sunday Poem on Gwarlingo and it went viral. Funny enough: many folks sharing it online were the influencer-type who inspired it. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PATRICK RAMSAY is a queer poet & owner of the indie shop Happy Magpie Book & Quill. He explores land, community & heart in Ogden, Utah. patrickramsaypoet.com Next - Before Thirty by Patrick Ramsay Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Review of El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez Willy Palomo El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez is a striking contribution to the poetry of the Central American diaspora. Ramirez writes in a form-forward style with a microscopic attention to language. His pen treks across an ambitious range of topics, including toxic masculinity, the climate crisis, as well as colonization and its hangovers. There is hardly a poem in this collection that doesn’t fit into his tightly woven thematic tapestry and the following four series: the “hijo please series,” where his mother provides him with sometimes toxic but always loving advice and admonitions; the “A Lesson …” series, where Ramirez unpacks the weight of colonization, migration, and (dis)possession, especially in gendered terms; “The Fabulous Wondrous Outfits of the Fabulous Wonder Twins” series, where Ramirez takes images of twinning from 80s and 90s music videos and spins them out to comment on the bifurcation of identity so frequently discussed by diasporic authors; and finally the “… is My America” series, where Ramirez takes moments of both joy and disaster to paint us the cultural landscape of his personal America. Such a tight grip on his pen gave me little space to doubt Ramirez’ intention, sequencing, or mastery of form, even when I may have wrestled against them. Take, for example, Ramirez’ use of codeswitching. The poet intentionally codeswitches in a staggering manner that pushes against the fluency of typical bilingualism. This excerpt from “A Broken red-eared Slider’s Shell” is case in point: house de flesh y hueso glides about un azure womb skyed con marbled membrane struck numb por prisms que shatter y skitter. The average bilingual reader will recognize that this is not how we generally codeswitch and likely will have difficulty saying this sentence aloud. For some, that will be a turn-off and valid criticism. It’s obvious to me at least that this move is intentional. The clash of languages in between articles and prepositions forces me to slow down to pronounce the language Ramirez conjures, which is beautiful even if I experience some pain in the difficulty of speaking it. Rather than flip the page in frustration, I marvel: what a clever way to corner his readers and force them to slow down and experience the violence of language. The trip of the tongue is a trip I experienced many times in my lifetime of losing and acquiring my Spanish. El Rey of Gold Teeth will routinely dazzle you with flashes of perfectly sketched moments and images Ramirez uses to transport people directly into his neighborhoods. In “La Pulga,” you will rummage through “a series of shirts,” where “Tweety is Chicana / Bart Simpson is Domincan” and “Vegeta is Salvadoreño now.” In “Finding Kittens After a Tropical Storm is My America,” Ramirez surveys his devastated city in an effortless contrapuntal, showing the reader “edgeless mouths struggling to speak” and how “raw pink paws thrash again / for nipples on rusted air conditioner.” In “A 4th Grade Dance Party in a Cafeteria at 1 P.M. is My America,” Ramirez shares the magic of watching children spontaneously dance “the milly rock, / the juju, running man. even ones before / their birth like the macarena, wobble, cha cha slide.” Ramirez displays such charm and mastery time and time again in poems about pupusas, pozole, Selena, and more. Ramirez writes from Houston, Texas, a city bursting at the seams with powerful Black and Latinx voices in a state that has banned more books than any other state as of 2023 and where diversity, equity, and inclusion has been outlawed in higher education. In El Rey of Gold Teeth, Ramirez follows the thread that stitches his Latinx communities, their significant leaders, their pop stars, and even their children, indelibly into the American empire. Their presence is frequently in resistance to colonization, surely. Other times, such as the poems “El Salvadoreño-Americano as Decolonizer, 1929-1936” and “The First Mexican American Astronaut Was Once,” I read Ramirez as a colonized intellectual a la Fanon, wrestling to provide meditative, compassionate portrayals that champion significant Latinx leaders whose jobs were ultimately intimately tied to American imperialism and settler colonization. I lay exhausted with my back to the mat in this wrestle with Ramirez, as we struggle to recuperate a history banned once again and attempt to forge a future where our people may still be nourished by their roots. The coming fascists will be willing to do more than ban us to stop us. It is our duty to survive. It is our duty to keep writing down our truths. Ramirez says of El Rey of Gold Teeth (Hub City Press, 2023): "Colonizing languages and subverting forms, rerouting histories, and finding the mundane made extraordinary, El Rey of Gold Teeth breaks open notions of destiny, in humorous and devastating ways, to reimagine the past and present a new future where lack transforms to abundance, where there will be many answers to every question." Previous WILLY PALOMO (he/they/she) is the author of Mercury in Reggaetón, winner of the Light Scatter Prize, and Wake the Others (Editorial Kalina/Glass Spider Publishing, 2023), a winner of a Foreword Prize in Poetry and an International Latino Book Award honorable mention in Bilingual Poetry. A veteran of the Salt Lake City poetry slam scene, his fiction, essays, poetry, translations, and songs can be found across print and web pages, including the Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and more. He has taught classes on literature, rap, and creative writing in universities, juvenile detention centers, high schools, and community centers. He is the son of two refugees from El Salvador. www.palomopoemas.com Next

THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine dedicated to writers exploring journeys through a changing world. Ken Waldman & Rachel White, Co-Editors ..................................................................................................................... KEN WALDMAN has drawn on 39 years as an Alaska resident to produce poems, stories, and fiddle tunes that combine into a performance uniquely his. www.kenwaldman.com and www.trumpsonnets.com ..................................................................................................................... RACHEL WHITE makes poems to praise the mystery of creation. Her poetry has appeared in journals, anthologies, on the radio and in the liner notes of a classical pianist's album. rachelwhitepoetry.org Wherever you go, there you are. ~ (Misattributed to) Confucius W elcome to THE NOMAD ! I bumped into Ken Waldman, “Alaska’s Fiddling Poet” in 2021 at a reading by Michael Branch in Boulder, Utah where Ken handed me a card printed with his “New Orleans Villanelle,” a poem I was astonished to learn had never found its place in a literary magazine. We wondered what other treasures might be out there, perhaps not entirely in step with trends of the moment but in conversation with a larger tradition. We invited writers we knew to send us a pair of their favorite pieces, one published and one unpublished, and we thank them wholeheartedly for supporting our endeavor to create a center of community around what can be conveyed through words. Our title, THE NOMAD is a nod to Ken, who has lived life more or less on the road since 2001, and to the avant-garde Beat Generation magazine, Nomad , published from 1959 to 1962. In a time of accelerating change, it is a title with increasing resonance. Published in the Mountain West, we envision a space that both embraces and transcends geography. Writing is a special kind of reading, and we hope that these pieces that hold significance for the generous authors featured in the first issue of THE NOMAD will inspire you to engage with what matters most. We would be honored to receive your poetry, prose, book reviews, letters, and essays - please find more information under the SUBMIT tab, above. Write us at nomadlitmag at gmail dot com . And coming in October, the annual print edition! ~Rachel ... a movement towards movement, towards action, towards transport which drives through all the American arts, but especially through American poetry and painting, although it's very much there in jazz; at the same time, there is a counter-longing against this sense of transport and movement, for something quiet, for something still, for an imperishable moment that halts time ... ~Poet Edward Hirsch at the Art Institute of Chicago opening of American Perspectives , 2007. Proud Member of [ clmp ] Community of Literary Magazines and Presses

Automotive by Kevin Prufer I keep returning to the image of a kitten asleep in the engine as a way of understanding the history of my country. So warm under the car’s hood, the hidden sweetness in the dark machinery. + Start the car. + [The sound the kitten makes.] + Happy slaves on a lazy afternoon sleeping in the shadow of haybales. A banjo lying in the sun. Stolen apples. A lithograph on the wall in my father’s office: “The sweet ol’ summuh time.” + My mother bought me a kitten. I brought it home in a cardboard box and how I loved that kitten, the way it purred in my arms and pressed its cold wet nose against my cheek. + Start the car. + In a poem by Jorie Graham, history is a hand grenade lodged in the pulp of a young tree. The tree grows, the tree grows. One day, a farmer chops it down for firewood. Imagine his surprise when the grenade— + [The sound the kitten made.] + My mother promised me a kitten, but it escaped, scurrying into the distant past. + I used to think history moved inexorably forward from villainy into truth, but the kitten was nowhere to be seen. I stood on the porch and called into the wind. Only the car cooled in the driveway, its engine ticking. + All those kittens asleep by the haybales— they had had too much to eat, and now they wanted a warm place to relax. The sun bore down upon them. + The grenade explodes as resentment, as rage, as the final expression of unredressed wrong. When the kitten licked my ear I laughed and fed it treats. + Start the car. + What did I know of evil? My father worked long evenings in his study so I could go to school. I had a safe childhood. Don’t make me feel guilty about that. I’m not guilty of anything here. + [That sound.] + They had stolen the apples and the time, but in the distance you could see their master walking from the barn, scowling— Lazy, lazy. Oh, you lazy…. + Anyway, I loved that kitten and when I couldn’t find it, I panicked not because it was a metaphor for the history of my country but because I loved its little pink tongue, the way it washed its paws— + The engraving hung upstairs, in his study. In the early evenings, the sunlight hit it, a bright red square before I was born. + The grenade keeps exploding into my adulthood. + I’m just going to run to the store for groceries, my mother said. You kids behave. You kids be good until I get back. Its little pink tongue. Its cold nose. The jangle of car keys. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Automotive appears in my newest books of poems, The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). It’s the only poem in that book not to see magazine publication, partly because it was a last-minute addition to the collection. Its origin comes from two seemingly unlike memories. First, a memory of a 19th century engraving I saw as a child, a troublingly sentimental image of enslaved people apparently happily sleeping and dancing instead of working. That print bothered me and stayed with me in memory. Second, a friend who, not knowing a kitten had crawled into his truck’s warm engine, killed the kitten when he started the truck. I felt sparks between these two memories. Somehow, the fact of slavery made anodyne (and comic) in the engraving felt like that kitten curled inside the engine of American history—a false image of joy and sentimentality paired with its own cry of pain and death. I suppose, finally, the poem is (partly) about the persistence of historic evil in the mind of the state, though we may have sometimes tried to diminish it through sentimentality or willful blindness. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KEVIN PRUFER'S newest books are The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023) and Sleepaway: a Novel (Acre Books, 2024). Among his eight other books are Churches , which was named one of the best ten books of 2015 by The New York Times, and How He Loved Them , which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book from the American literary press. Prufer’s work appears widely in Best American Poetry , The Pushcart Prize Anthology , The Paris Review , and The New Republic , among others. He also directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to rediscovering great, long forgotten authors. kevinprufer.com Next - 11/8/16 by Joe Sacksteder Next