< Back to Breakthroughs Issue An Amicable Correspondence Scott Abbott amicable : good-natured, harmonious, cordial, agreeable, good-humored, kind, polite No, none of those. I mean something with more bite, more room for spirited exchange. This amicable correspondence will be between amici , prijatelji , Freunde . amicable : between friends. In 1826, officials in Weimar decided to clean out an overstuffed mausoleum that housed the remains of various notables, including those of Friedrich Schiller, who had died twenty-one years earlier. When they could not identify Schiller’s bones in the chaotic crypt, a doctor named Schwabe gathered 23 skulls to examine at home. Schwabe had known Schiller, he had his death mask, but still he was unable to identify Schiller’s skull with any certainty. He finally chose a skull that distinguished itself by its large size and fine, regular form. Großherzog Karl August recommended that the skull eventually be housed under glass next to Leibniz’s skull in the Royal Library. In the meantime, Goethe borrowed the skull and in the night of September 25th wrote a poem in honor of his friend, exploring the shifting relationships between nature and spirit, between matter and mind. Wilhelm von Humboldt saw the skull in Goethe’s possession and wrote to his wife that Goethe was having a burial vault built in the hopes that he and Schiller could eventually lie there together. In the end, the friends never shared a grave. DNA analysis in 2008 proved that the skull in question belonged to someone other than Friedrich Schiller. I decide to translate Goethe's poem. The dense rhymes of terza rima and the rhythms of iambic pentameter are integral formal contributors to the content, but my attempts to reproduce them in English are a disaster. I opt for a more straightforward form. While Contemplating Schiller’s Skull It was in the somber ossuary that I saw skulls aligned with ordered skulls; old times, I thought, gone grey. They stand fixed in rows, once mutual foes, and stout bones that clashed to kill lie athwart, rest subdued. Dismembered shoulder blades! what they bore now lost, and fine and lively limbs, the hand, the foot, scattered, disjointed. In vain you lay down tired, they left you no peace in the grave, drove you again into daylight. No one can love the desiccated shell, whatever splendid noble germ it protected. Yet for me, the adept, were inscribed sacred meanings not revealed to all, as I, amidst that unblinking multitude sensed an image wondrous beyond imagination, and in the clammy hall’s constriction I was warmed, refreshed, as if life had sprung from death. How mysteriously the form ravished me! The divinely ordered trace, preserved! A glimpse that carried me off to that sea whence figures rise transmuted. Mysterious vessel! Orphic oracle, How am I worthy to hold you in my hand? Lifting you fervently, ultimate treasure, from corruption and into the open air to freely muse, turning myself, devoutly, to the sunlight. What more can one attain in a lifetime than that God-Nature reveals herself? How she lets what is firm pass away to spirit, How firmly she preserves what the spirit engenders. (to be continued) Translating the poem from German to English and from the distance of two centuries, I enjoy an opening of sorts. As opposed to my largely monolingual habitation in the American West where I was born and raised, my friends Žarko Radaković and Alex Caldiero live at linguistic junctures. Žarko, who emigrated from the former Yugoslavia and whose native language is Serbo-Croatian, lives in Cologne with his German wife Anne. An uncompromising novelist, he is also a devoted translator of works by Peter Handke. Alex, who emigrated from Sicily to Brooklyn at the age of nine, lives in Orem, Utah with his Russian / Turkish / American wife Setenay. His poetry performances are legendary and his translations from Sicilian include the delightful “Bawdy Riddles and Tongue Twisters of the Sicilian Folk:” Trasi tisa / E nesci modda — It goes in hard / And comes out soft. !Pasta). I have been the fortunate friend of these emigrant / immigrant / translator / artists for more than four decades. 8 December 2017 I show Alex my new hearing aids. He points out that because his right ear is still his worst one, the fact that I can now hear through my bad left ear won’t change the fact that I’ll need to walk on his right side if we’re walking and talking. He has some technical questions. And then he gets to the heart of the matter: What if this destroys our friendship? What do you mean? What if our friendship is based on miscommunication? What if we’re friends only because I’ve been hearing you poorly and you haven’t been hearing me correctly? While contemplating that possibility, I tell Alex about Goethe’s poem written while contemplating his friend Schiller’s skull. My mother, Alex responds, had a burning desire to see her father’s bones. We were in Licodea, Sicily, and she insisted that we go to the cemetery where the family crypt is. My grandfather’s casket is in the ground-level room of the crypt, directly under the altar. She asked a cemetery official if she could open the casket. You can do anything you want in your family’s crypt, he said. I did my best to dissuade her from opening the casket. You know how close to an emotional edge I live; imagine my mother 100 times closer to that edge. She finally acquiesced and we didn’t open the casket. When Schiller died, Goethe was 55 and Schiller 45. Goethe was 76 when he contemplated Schiller’s skull. Žarko, Alex, and I are 73, 69, and 69 respectively. None of us is likely to write a poem with the other’s skull on our desk. Schiller’s first letter to Goethe (first of more than a thousand letters subsequently passed between them), dated the 13thof June, 1794 and sent from Jena to the neighboring town of Weimar, addresses Goethe as High Wellborn Sir, Highly-to Be-Honored Privy Councilor . The letter is a request for contributions to Schiller’s proposed literary journal Die Horen (The Horae). Schiller mentions co-publishers—idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte and the linguist and eventual founder of the University of Berlin Wilhelm von Humboldt. He signs the letter Your High Wellborn, most obedient servant and most sincere admirer F. Schiller . Goethe responds on the 24th of June and then again on the 25th of July. He offers a token of friendship and assures Schiller that he is very much looking forward to a frequent and lively exchange of ideas: "I shall with pleasure and with all my heart be one of the party." Several letters follow and in September Goethe invites Schiller to visit him in Weimar. Schiller responds enthusiastically on September 7th, but with a caveat: that Goethe not rely on him to meet any domestic timetables. Cramps during the night disturb him so seriously, Schiller writes, that he finds it necessary to sleep the entire morning and cannot commit to anything at any given hour. "You will, then, allow me to be a complete stranger in your house . . . to isolate myself so that I can escape the embarrassment of having to depend on others. . . . Excuse these preliminaries. . . . I ask for the simple freedom of being allowed to be ill while being your guest." And with that the friendship that proved so valuable to both men was begun. Goethe later told Schiller that he had given him “a second youth and made me a poet again, which I had as good as ceased to be.” Schiller, thinking perhaps of his delicate health and uncertain future, wrote that, “I hope that we can walk together down as much of the road as may remain, and with all the more profit, since the last companions on a journey always have most to say to each other.” Years later, while Goethe was editing their correspondence for publication, he asked “what could be more amusing than to see our letters begin with the pompous announcement of the Horen . . . . And yet, if there hadn’t been that impulse and will to document the times, everything in German literature would now be very different.” If the Serb hadn’t invited the American to contribute to the literary journal Knjizevna kritika , if the Sicilian and the American hadn’t begun neighborly conversations about poetry, and if the Serb and the Sicilian hadn’t conversed one morning in the American’s house, everything in the field of Serbian-American-Sicilian literature would now be very different. This opening section of my half of the book We, On Friendship (Elik Press, 2022), co-written by Žarko Radaković and with contributions from Alex Caldiero, led to a surprising integration of Goethe’s and Schiller’s correspondence into the correspondence between the three of us. For more about the three books Žarko and I have published in both Serbian and English, see our website . Previous SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor emeritus of Integrated Studies, Philosophy, and Humanities at Utah Valley University. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger. (Common Consent Press, 2022). He has translated works by Nobel Prize Awardee Peter Handke and botanist Gregor Mendel. scottabbottauthor.com Next

Insomnia by Cynthia Hardy The pillow has heard it all: the litany of undone things. The horses stamp the barn at night; each thump of hoof against board accuses. Not nearly enough hay, they tell me, and where’s all the green stuff? Snow fills their paddock to their knees. And what about my words to you? Should I have said íf instead of when; what then? The darkness spreads full and warm. Blankets tangle. The cat pats my cheek with her untrimmed paw. Should I change the litter box now? Call a long-lost friend? The horses set out across the land, looking for the barn they deserve, red paint and all. A stream flows year round, its banks curve, green plush, to the clear water. There are other horses, none with shaggy coats or dirt-packed hooves. The cat wants to be in the dream. She perches her wiry self on the black mare’s back and weaves, tail spiraling for balance as they gallop off. You rise, say, I’m going with them. Fine, I say. My eyes blink; blink propagates blink. I sweep the blankets across my shoulders like some Versace robe, a gown of sleep. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue From We Tempt Our Luck , finalist in the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Chapbook Contest, 2009. This poem reflects some themes I often go back to—the horses, a cat or a dog, the impact of winter on the psyche, insomnia, and dreams. It was also a response to a set of prompts I set myself from bits of found language—in this case, the word “Versace.” The “you” in these two poems may or may not be a real person. .................................................................................................................................................................................... CINDY HARDY writes from Chena Ridge, Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published poetry and fiction, with a new poetry collection, Rude Weather forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Next - Mākara Beach by Michael McLane Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue West on Piccadilly Shauri Cherie Stop for a moment to feel the air grow colder, chilled by the rush of passersby milling on steps, on escalators, staying on the right to make way for those rushing for the platform. Take a step and listen to the sound of footfall and the grind of the train on the rail and the faint trill of Mind the gap over the speakers. Push between two teenagers stumbling out onto the platform for Russell Square. There’s little room on the Tube at this hour, but squeeze yourself into a corner, wrap your hand around the bar, and bear it as more and more people crowd around you. Some might have come from King’s Cross (they keep luggage tucked protectively between their knees as if anticipating the worst) or perhaps they’re on the journey home tonight (the woman next to you has mascara smudged beneath her eyelids and a seated old man is slumped forward onto his wrinkled palms). The doors will shut behind with a mechanical hiss. Sway with the lurch of the train as it departs, see a girl holding her mother’s hand shift her footing. The train twists and turns and tilts until brakes squeal to a stop at Holborn, Covent Garden, and, finally, Leicester Square. The doors open to a white-tiled wall, and here, the people move faster, faster, faster, so pause in this moment to watch the tide of bodies swell around you. Wait to watch a group of girls sway concert-drunk and tourists take selfies to post on Instagram, men hovering next to their wives, children swinging their feet in their seats while parents shush them and apologize to those seated beside. Wait here until the doors begin to hiss once more, then you, an American in a country that isn’t your own, step off the Tube and onto the platform, careful to mind the gap. "West on Piccadilly" was the first poem I wrote for my European travel lyric sequence as an undergrad. It was originally published in Outrageous Fortune , but this version has been edited in preparation for a chapbook. It's sensory-focused, meant to capture the barrage overwhelming the senses of someone from a rural Utah town in the heart of London. It was a breakthrough experience that boosted my confidence, and rereading it brings the Tube vividly back again. Previous SHAURI CHERIE is easily excited by travel, curry, and stingrays. Her work appears in Trace Fossils Review , Ghost Light Lit , and others. shauricherie.com 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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Ghazal with Coyotes, Gaza and Healing Herbs Pamela Uschuk “My eyes went to heaven instead of me.” —five year old boy in Gaza, PBS NEWS , January 2025 Desert wind razors oleander leaves, scraping dawn’s yard. My pup attacks coyotes through chain-link fence to the East. Radio cries for children bombed each day in Gaza’s rubble. Love-starved, rain refuses to kiss wildfires to the East. What is chickpea flour to dead mothers wrapped in white sheets? My shoes catch fire. I would send rivers of milk to the East. On my sill, basil & healing herbs flex from East to West. Finches and mourning doves sing up sun to the East. A rabidcoyote bit three neighbor dogs across town. During chemo, my friend sent dates sweet dried from the East . Neighbor kids dribble, shoot baskets on asphalt, shoes laced to laughing feet, tap love notes to the East. Revenge rape is no quotient to solve torn burkas. Indentured slave, my migrant grandma prayed to the East. My ancestors were massacred by a tyrant’s troops. I am their contrail sending love poems to the East. For years I believed my alien name meant big ears. migrating to Belarus from Siberia far East. Uschuk means whale who spirals down to evade enemies. I’d curl in a blue whale’s singing brain to the East. Where is God when bodies are blown to bone confetti? What herb heals daughters & sons exploded in the East? When Ami Kaye, publisher of Glass Lyre Press, solicited poems for an anthology of Ghazals, I was determined to write one. Before this ghazal, published by Ami Kaye in Nur Melange Anthology of Ghazals , my earlier ghazals seemed wooden, forced. But, this ghazal was an axe that opened my heart broken by daily images of Israel’s incessant bombing of Gaza, by its genocide of Gazan citizens, especially its women and children. I wanted to write a ghazal to honor the dead civilians of this hideously beseiged nation. This was a breakthrough Ghazal for me. I haven’t yet mastered this elegant Persian form, but I am happy with this poem. Previous PAMELA USCHUK is the author of eight books of poems and has received many awards including the American Book Award. She is a senior fellow and board member of Black Earth Institute, as well as Editor in Chief of Cutthroat , a Journal of the Arts. www.pamelauschuk.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Gamble Patrilineage Robbie Gamble B eginning with James, of Scotch-Irish stock, shipped out to America from Enniskillen at sixteen, following the magnetic call of Manifest Destiny, pulling up on the stockyard banks of Cincinnati. There he learned the soapmaking trade, and soon fell in with William Procter, candlemaker. They pooled funds, and in 1837 co-founded the Procter & Gamble company. Energetic, shrewd stockpilers of materials, they grew the business well, filled coffers in Civil War contracts on the Union side, shipping bar soap and candles downstream into the maw of the conflict. And when the armies stumbled home they expanded as the nation, reconstructing, flexed its wealth westward. D avid, son of James, born into wealth amidst the bright industrial flush of household goods, cradled high on the bow of flagship Ivory Soap, while America scoured itself clean, striving toward a fresh end to the century. David served P&G as company Secretary, retiring in 1893 to sail the world with sons, overseeing Presbyterian missions charged with Oriental evangelization. Disembarking, he shuttled between showcase mansions in Cincinnati and Pasadena, the latter now a national landmark, the Gamble House. C larence, son of David, unexpected youngest of three. Prodigal, self-possessed, he posted first in his class at Princeton, 1914, then second through Harvard Medical School. His generation unburdened by the reins of soap production, instead he got a trust fund, his first million at twenty-one. Clarence caught the bug of Eugenics, pseudo-science of race and class superiority, dreaded humanity being dragged down by bad genes. He never built a medical practice, instead became a population-manipulator of one, urging for more babies amongst the educated, testing new contraceptives for the poor, funding rogue clinical trials, advocating sterilization of the feeble-minded in the rural South, always striving to constrain human sprawl in worrisome backward societies around the globe. W alter, son of Clarence, third of five redheaded siblings, the quiet, studious one. He lived for scientific questing; like his father he studied medicine, and unlike him he kept at it, specializing in pediatric cardiology, designing new pacemaking devices in the 1960s to impose strict rhythms on sick kids’ faltering hearts. He kept a hand in the family’s Great Cause of world population control, sitting on their foundation board, rattled about in his research lab with a menagerie of subject rats and cows, rounded on patients, and biked in to work in all kinds of weather, for over thirty years. R obbie, son of Walter, first of three boys, came into unexpected millions at eighteen. He grew deep discomfort for his wealth, shifted from Harvard to the Bowery in 1982, to work among homeless folks, and with his first wife Martha gifted away a fortune. He became a nurse practitioner to better care for people scraping at the margins, raised three kids, lost a marriage and a brother, discovered Anna, an orchard, a shining reverence for words. If there’s a breakthrough in the unpublished poem “Gamble Patrilineage,” it’s in the influence of my first wife, Martha, who helped me to see through the constraints of the patriarchy and the trappings of wealth, and turn away from family convention to become a more authentic agent for change in the world. My family has an almost biblical sense of self-importance, and I find it useful to coopt that narrative with an over-the-top generational structure that shows the undue focus given to the men on the family tree. Previous ROBBIE GAMBLE is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). He is poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine . robbiegamble.com Next

Mākara Beach by Michael McLane I fall in love my first step southerly slamming car door back onto my leg I bleed a little into my sock a good start the baches more driftwood than intent the lone café closed and closed and closed paint of it sheared annually a reptile coming into its own cold blood I smell death from the car park a short distance to the sandbar hiding the sea lion bloated about to sublimate there is peculiar sweetness to the air to the stiff flipper over the eyes the invasion began here as certain as tides as certain as barbed wire twisted into crumbling cliff faces men stormed ashore frigid and trembling funneled up the valley to Karori and beyond we need monsters most days— printers’ marks survey site or crosshairs— gun emplacements is a gentle term gift or softened stance the pedestals still fit the human form perfectly parallel to wind farm perpendicular to wind these are old fears— Dunedin’s guns trained on the 19th century Russians invisible invincible unease teens fucking each new generation into being in crumbling batteries ghosts of drowned Cossacks in the harbor each time I return the beach littered with thousands of bluebottle jellyfish their spent casings saturated and prophylactic as myth Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This poem was another early one in the NZ work, when I was still trying to navigate the tremendous beauty of my new home, the ferocious violence both inherent to its wild places and imposed upon them by humans, as well as the myths and urban legends that arose from the intersections of these qualities. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MICHAEL MCLANE is the author of the chapbooks Trace Elements and Fume . He is an editor with Dark Mountain and Sugar House Review and was a founding editor of saltfront. He currently lives in Martinborough, Aotearoa/New Zealand and recently completed a PhD at the International Institute for Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Next - On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942 by Michael McLane Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Cold Marble, Hot Memories Lev Raphael I was in love with museums before I even visited one. My parents had a small, battered, brown suitcase filled with art postcards from London, Paris, and all across Belgium, where they lived for five years after WWII. They never spoke much about surviving the Holocaust, and the hundreds of postcards seemed to fill that silence for me. Europe was art back then, not death and destruction, and I communed with those images as intently as someone deep in prayer. Sitting on the linoleum-covered floor in front of them, I could have been one of those guys in a science fiction movie opening a mysterious box whose unseen contents give off an unearthly and mesmerizing glow. My Washington Heights bedroom had an unobstructed view of the George Washington Bridge and watching its lights come on at dusk was one of my quiet joys, as soothing as poring over these photos of statues and paintings. But nothing prepared me for the revelations on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A fan of Ancient Greek history and Greek myths in elementary school, I was immediately drawn to the galleries of Greek and Roman statues. I already sensed I was different from my classmates and I was electrified by the bold nudity on one pedestal after another, bathed in tender natural light from above, or so it seemed, and lit up more by their own perfection. With my parents off in some other gallery, I wandered and stared and studied--and who could accuse me of anything unwholesome or dangerous? I felt safe there, sheltered, wordlessly embraced. It was a much later piece, though, that changed my life: Canova's Perseus . At the time, this statue loomed on a landing at the top of a mammoth staircase, its placement making the space around it feel like an altar. Shy then, bookish, easily bullied, and living in the shadow of an older brother who seemed to get all the attention I craved, I relished the Perseus, would have gulped it down if it were a drink. Easily three times my size, Perseus was all graceful, cool triumph as he held Medusa's grotesque head away from himself. His strength, his beauty, and yes, his perfect nude body, filled me with longing not just to be him, but to create something, anything. I returned to him on each visit, engrossed, inspired, and many years later wrote a story in which he figures as an icon of gay desire. Every statue from the ancient world that I've encountered since that day, whether in the Santa Barbara Museum or Berlin's Pergamon Museum, reminds me of the discovery of such unparalleled beauty and the nascent discoveries of self that waited for me in my teens. I've even felt Perseus's power at London's Tate Modern Museum, wandering through an exhibition of Brancusi statues which couldn't have been more unlike Canova's work, but their beauty triggered vivid memories of his. And made me cry, which alarmed the nearest guard. I muttered something about being overwhelmed and wandered off, dazed but replete. Published in the Gay & Lesbian Review . I grew up in an immigrant family where money was tight but the love of art and music was the air I breathed. My parents took me to concerts and musicals from a very early age and we visited the major museums in Manhattan so often that I grew to have favorite pieces like Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art and "Rembrandt Contemplating a Bust of Homer" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were works that mesmerized me with their beauty, especially since I had no talent whatsoever myself as a visual artist. But I did have words and the words for the sculpture described here apparently lay dormant until early in the pandemic when in my relative isolation from friends, family and even neighbors, I found myself writing essay after essay as memories filled my days. I was never truly alone. And art was where it all began. Previous LEV RAPHAEL is an editor, mentor, writing coach and the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. writewithoutborders.com and levraphael.substack.com Next

Before Thirty by Patrick Ramsay I streak through a golf course in nectarine light and self-destruct a little bit. Not in a Salamander Letter type of way, but like an old truck whose engine blows right after the warranty is up. I cancel the party. Detonate my relationship. Call in sick. Call my old therapist with the tattoos. Ask him if he’s still engaged. Send up a flare. Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize the word hello and help are one autocorrect away from twinhood. I kiss everyone. Kiss goodbye to my savings account. Greet one thousand new hobbies with the fervor of a young dog. Tongue out. I only have so much time left to be reckless in my twenties. I was twenty-eight the first time a twink told me he loves older guys. This. This is why all the queens call thirty gay death. I feel too young, too childless, too cut loose to be someone’s daddy. But maybe he was right. My mortgage, the chicken coop, the poodle-mutt rescue dog. I used to be stupid. Gloriously, aimlessly stupid. But at some point along the way: A bungalow, a career, a real live-with-me, go-to-weddings-and-farmers-markets-together partner. Someone must have tricked me. Tricked me into learning what a 401k is. What a deductible is. How to become interested in interest rates. I’m going to be sick. Sick and grown up forever. And thirty is a perfectly fine age. It’s the death of the I did this in my twenties thing that I’m mourning. Who damned me to grow up this fast? To man before I really was done boying. This is the part where I’m supposed to assure you that a job can be a dream, and mowing your own lawn, also a dream. But gut laughs, mushroom trips, occasional sex with strangers—also, also a dream. I know I know, that growing older grows on you, but youth is a temporary meadow with soft scruff, and I guess this is the long way of saying I’m afraid of losing something I didn’t know was worth anything. Anyway, call me when you get this. Need to borrow your drill again. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This unpublished poem came out fully formed, like a platypus frog or a nervous confession. I was one week from turning thirty and wrestling with what that meant. As a gay man, aging is such a prickly arena, and many men treat thirty like a sunset of their dewy youth. This poem reflects on all the glorious stupidities of my twenties and what it means to realize (maybe a little too late) that you might just have become a man before you were really done boying. And I still don’t own a drill. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room by Paul Fericano Next

Mike White < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Double Life Mike White 00:00 / 01:03 Double Life Mike White No man ever steps in the same river twice. -Heraclitus If anyone and I mean anyone knows where she is . . . pleads her father on the news, and I curse under my breath, releasing incomprehensible hosannas of Good God Good God before invoking his only child, Jesus Fucking Christ, who in my childbrain had once led a secret double life as a lamb. In the early spring, ice can give way, so it does, a red snowsuit here one minute and the next and the next and the next until only the river keeps moving, a river that is never the same . . . up to his waist, a father still calling and calling her name. “Double Life,” is a brand new poem, and comes at the theme with a particularly literal rendering. Previous MIKE WHITE is the author of How to Make a Bird with Two Hands (Word Works, 2012) and Addendum to a Miracle (Waywiser, 2017), winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Next

On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942 by Michael McLane the photo is insufficient— a crudely drawn-map shows only what emerges from the depths what hides within is obscured here there be dragons, no here there be silhouettes and mimics there are only the hulking islands adrift, sloughed from some distant continent of steel full of flightless or unfledged birds we do not see the sky which is the same shade of grey as the hull we do not see the greens of gear the shade of pine the shade of gorse never know of the splinter in your hand from the dock end of the gangway made of local wood and weather-beaten your baggage, the unintended weight is centre-stage a black hole in the image your face half light, half shadow, you on the dark side of the moon Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue First published in Dark Mountain . Nathan Cook was the first American soldier to set foot in New Zealand during WWII. nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/first-american-soldier-lands-nz This is the first poem I wrote after my move to NZ in 2019. It engages with the strata of imperialism in NZ as well as the disorientation of someone far from home and perhaps well out of their depth. As my PhD work progressed, I continued to come back to it, taken by both its prescience for what the project would eventually become and its naivete (not unlike Cook’s own upon his arrival) about the history in which the new arrival is about to be immersed. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MICHAEL MCLANE is the author of the chapbooks Trace Elements and Fume . He is an editor with Dark Mountain and Sugar House Review and was a founding editor of saltfront. He currently lives in Martinborough, Aotearoa/New Zealand and recently completed a PhD at the International Institute for Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.