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.

THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine dedicated to writers exploring journeys through a changing world. First Issue ................................................................................................................................................................................. "FAVORITES" - 2024/2025 Siren - poem The Lure of the Unfinished -poem ..................................................................................... by Amy Gerstler Reading -poem Gradual - poem ..................................................................................... by Natasha Sajé You Oughta Know - poem The Black Flies of Home - poem ..................................................................................... by Brock Dethier Fireflies - poem Automotive - poem ..................................................................................... by Kevin Prufer 11/8/16 - poem Tuesday Night Bieber - essay ..................................................................................... by Joe Sacksteder Hiroshi Tanahashi - poem Pissing Toward the Sky - poem ..................................................................................... by Jerry VanIeperen Alien Exchange Program - Host Application - fiction A Twist of the Vine - memoir ..................................................................................... by Naomi Ulsted Something To Surrender To - poem Bone Suite - poem ..................................................................................... by Austin Holmes Village Fiddle - poem New Orleans Villanelle - poem ..................................................................................... by Ken Waldman I'd Rather be Influenced - poem Before Thirty - poem ..................................................................................... by Patrick Ramsay Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room - poem Sinatra, Sinatra - poem ..................................................................................... by Paul Fericano Sacrament Meeting Started the Three Hours of Church on Sunday - poem Teddy Thompson Croons Leonard Cohen - poem ..................................................................................... by Natalie Padilla Young The Worrier - poem Junk Email - poem ..................................................................................... by Nancy Takacs Belief - poem Without Question I Am - poem ..................................................................................... by Mike White The First Time I Saw Snow - poem The Little House: Crystal City, Texas - poem ..................................................................................... by Jeff Talmadge The Dream - poem July - poem ..................................................................................... by Shanan Ballam Missa Brevis - poem Foley Catheter - poem ..................................................................................... by Kimberly Johnson Among - poem Insomnia - poem ..................................................................................... by Cynthia Hardy Mākara Beach - poem On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942 - poem ..................................................................................... by Michael McLane

Sunday Morning Early by David Romtvedt My daughter and I paddle red kayaks across the lake. Pulling hard, we slip easily through the water. Far from either shore, it hits me that my daughter is a young woman and suddenly everything is a metaphor for how short a time we are granted: the red boats on the blue-black water, the russet and gold of late summer’s grasses, the empty sky. We stop and listen to the stillness. I say, “It’s Sunday, and here we are in the church of the out of doors,” then wish I’d kept quiet. That’s the trick in life— learning to leave well enough alone. Our boats drift to where the chirring of grasshoppers reaches us from the rocky hills. A clap of thunder. I want to say something truer than I love you. I want my daughter to know that, through her, I live a life that was closed to me. I paddle up, lean out, and touch her hand. I start to speak then stop. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “Sunday Morning Early” was published in The Sun magazine and in Dilemmas of the Angels (LSU Press, 2017), and was included in the Worthington, Ohio Public Library’s Garden Poetry Path public art project. I recently heard a prominent performance artist say that no great art has ever been produced from happiness. This statement made me feel deeply unhappy. I’ve spent many years working to write poems that will carry social meaning, offer pleasure, lead us to think more deeply, and explore those parts of our lives that give satisfaction, that is, happiness. I believe that great art can arise from happiness. As to whether or not the poem I’ve sent is great art I can’t say, but it is the result of happiness. .................................................................................................................................................................................... DAVID ROMTVEDT'S latest book of poetry is No Way: An American Tao Te Ching (LSU Press, 2021). He was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in southern Arizona. He graduated from Reed College, with a BA in American Studies and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a graduate fellow in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. After serving in the Peace Corps in Zaïre (currently Congo) and Rwanda and on a sister city construction project in Jalapa, Nicaragua, he worked as the folk arts program manager for the Centrum Foundation. He has worked as a carpenter, tree planter, truck driver, bookstore clerk, assembly line operative, letter carrier, blueberry picker, ranch hand, and college professor. A recipient of two NEA fellowships, The Pushcart Prize , and the Wyoming Governor's Arts Award, Romtvedt served as the poet laureate of the state of Wyoming from 2003 to 2011. davidromtvedt.com Next - Peach by Jennifer Tonge Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue COMING OF AGE ON MY 84th BIRTHDAY George Amabile Something I should have learned when I was young enough to take it seriously explodes, slowly like a zucchini blossom, announcing another surprise in the laddered shades of aging. Forget the calendar with its beaches and snow-tufted cedars. Think instead of the way music tends to extend the distance between now, and now again. Time, a perplexity of stars and planets, deft conjectures and a down--to-earth god, incarnate in one line of a poem grass… the beautiful uncut hair of graves , distant but close enough to wake up the Buddhist emptiness I missed in a lifetime of lectures, paper futures, main-line entertainments... Something I already know too many names for changes like the flame from a sunset lake in that moment before the last light fails, and maybe much too late I’m in love with everything that remains unsaid, unsayable but suddenly heard in the sound of rain on a slate roof. Published in Best Canadian Poetry 2025 (Biblioasis, Ottawa, 2024), and Smartish Pace, Issue 29, February 2022. "Coming of Age on My 84th Birthday" is about entering a new and unexpectedly open state of consciousness, what Joyce called an epiphany, though that may be too grand a word for what these poems describe. (Editor's note: not too grand a word, perfect! ) Previous GEORGE AMABILE has published twelve books and has had work in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, and Canadian Literature . 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

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE OLD MAN AND THE FENCES Alex Barr To a man of eighty, a thousand-foot hill is Everest. I see it from my kitchen window, three miles away, featureless green sloping to an inscrutable summit, often attended like Bali Ha’i by low-flying cloud. Its name is Cilciffeth—no-one here in Wales knows what that means. I knew I had to face the trial of strength it offered. From a challenge ever before your eyes, there’s no escape. In my youth I ascended the highest peaks of England, Scotland, and Wales. It was hard to let go that version of myself. I thought I could take in a long road walk before the start of the bridleway up Cilciffeth. How often I’ve rushed into things without investigating the pitfalls. The road swung left invitingly and I ignored the smaller road straight on. I was soon lost. The map made no sense. At an isolated property, a not-too-friendly woman gave me confusing directions. A half mile on, exhausted, I aborted my mission. For my second attempt I parked much nearer. No wrong turning this time. I reached the B4313 road, and found the bridleway. I thought a bridleway was a path you can ride a horse on, but I wouldn’t have ridden on that one, more stream than path, dangerously uneven, hemmed in by overgrown hedges. I was attacked by horse botflies which left furuncular lesions and a swollen finger. I sat on a grassy mound and drank water. Further on, the path widened and a view of distant hills, patches of woodland, and scattered farmsteads opened up. I made my second stop, this time with coffee. My home-made lemon polenta cupcake was tempting, but I saved it. The day had warmed and I was glad I brought shorts to change into. Cilciffeth was now ahead on the right. The map showed its eastern flank outlined in brown, denoting ‘Access Land’ where you could walk at will. But access was denied by a steep bank topped by a barbed-wire fence. I thought of turning back, less through fatigue than a hopeless feeling, but the rhythm of my feet led me on until I saw an opening, amateurishly blocked with rusty pieces of gate. I climbed over. I was on Access Land. Without an obvious path to the summit, I had to trek through low gorse and grassy tussocks which threatened to turn my ankle. The thought of having to be recovered by air ambulance or mountain rescue unnerved me, and there was no cell phone signal. Go on, or turn back? The map showed the summit just half a mile away, but I had lost the ability to judge the effort needed to cross that irritating terrain. I went on, but halted every twenty yards or so to reconsider. Would ageing legs hold out? Imagining the shame of a second failure drove me on. Cilciffeth is one of those hills where the skyline keeps suggesting a summit, then offers more rising ground as you approach. The only landmark ahead was a group of scrubby trees. I headed for them. They seemed to get no nearer. I thought of my friend M, with whom I enjoyed many walks, and whose death left me diminished. What would he say? “Press on!” I pressed on. Then I saw the fence. I had noticed it on the map and feared it would block me, but was surprised to see a gate in it. Nevertheless I was very tired. I took off my backpack and flopped down. Could I retreat without dishonor? Had I earned more coffee and—at last—the cupcake? Magic! The sweet sticky substance revived me. I climbed the locked gate. An overgrown cart track led on. A slight rise to my right was the summit itself, but that was a distraction, because my main aim was to see the harbor town I lived in, and if possible, my house, reversing the view from the kitchen. I plodded on until I saw the long pale row of houses on the headland above the harbor, then the harbor itself. It was enough. I retraced my steps, not suspecting what lay ahead. The problem with a mountain is that if you lose the end of the path you reached the summit by, you may descend by a different path which takes you miles from your starting point. Walking down through what seemed the same gorse bushes and patches of burnt heather, I saw a gate. It wasn’t the opening where I had climbed over, but surely led onto the right bridleway further along? It seemed not. Not far along the path petered out. Now I had to climb locked gates, field after field, reached through waterlogged mud churned up by cattle. Between waves of panic, I felt surprising moments of calm. The result of years of meditation? Or the feeling that in old age nothing matters? My strength still hadn’t given out. But where was the B4313? The landscape of small hills and patches of woodland was no different from that near my starting point, except in the details. After several more gates I saw a respectable-looking road in the distance. It curved round a hill, gently rising—and completely unfamiliar. There were no more gates. Now I had to climb hedgebanks topped with barbed wire fences. Then—a sign my hiking days were over?—the sole of my right boot came off. And yet I still felt calm. These obstacles were taking all my concentration. At last I reached a road. I’ve often arrived at well-known places from an unfamiliar angle, making them strange. To my surprise, a sign read B4314! It was the same road that went on to curve around a hill. I noted surrounding landmarks and checked the map. I had reached the B4314 a mile-and-a-half from where the bridleway joined it. A Hopalong Cassidy route march lay ahead. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. At the limit of my strength, I reached the car. I had conquered Cilciffeth. "The Old Man and the Fences" was published in 2024 in New Isles Press Issue 3, “Border Teorainn Mairch” in Northern Ireland. The story tells of a physical challenge and ordeal overcome by a man of eighty, spurred on by a memory of what his oldest friend would say. Previous ALEX BARR 's publications include two short fiction collections and three poetry collections, the most recent of which is Light and Dark (Kelsay Books, 2024) . He is assembling a collection of nonfiction. alexbarr.co.uk Next

For Hank Williams No matter how I struggle and strive I'll never get out of this world alive. by Lisa Bickmore In the back seat of a Cadillac, bloated, white boots, white hat, blue suit, all colored with pain of every stripe, a bottle of bonded bourbon in hand, riding on one shot of morphine and then, in Knoxville, two more: they’d driven north into ice and weather on the cusp of a new year, aiming to make recompense for everything: someone once described his drunkenness as shambolic, and it took misunderstanding the word twice—first Shambhala, then shaman—until I got it: shambles, as in flesh shelf, precisely that Cadillac’s back seat, that literal falling apart, as the teenage driver sped on and on for the sake of the contract and its penalty clause, right up to Oak Hill hospital, West Virginia, where two doctors pronounced him dead: he’d been booted from the Opry to the Hayride, and first one, then a second marriage gone wrong, the body bad from the start, spina bifida occulta predicting the entire pandemonium: now I’m listening to the last song he ever charted, listening hard for the hurt, and the will to thwart it, redeem the losses in a voice so brash, and brother if I stepped on a worn-out dime I bet a nickel I could tell you if it was heads or tails, thin shoe sole figuring how every harm marked the body: just a skinny twenty-nine when he went, but this song—the cool chin up as the fiddle scrapes, the beat squares, guitar slides liquid—all telling how this vernacular requires a wreck. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem began as a question—I read a piece about Hank Williams that used the word 'shambolic' to describe his drinking. I love when a query leads me into a poem, in this case hearing certain rhymes of meaning that ended up being false, which also led me into learning about Hank Williams and his short, tragic life, and his prodigious songwriting and recording. I have other poems that have had similar origin stories—an assumption or belief that proved to be false, but opened a door into other words and metaphors and stories. I love poems about music and musicians, too. .................................................................................................................................................................................... LISA BICKMORE is the author of three books of poems and is the publisher of Lightscatter Press . She is the poet laureate of the state of Utah. lisabickmore.com Next - The Other Man is Always French by Richard Peabody Next

Acrostic Lifeboat Take words with you and return to God. Hosea 14:3 by Maureen Clark The bug zapper flashes Morse code, A spark for each dot and dash - saying - pay attention. Words are being Kindled from these fried insects. The rise and fall of empires depend on Each death. Our elliptical orbit brings another year of language. Why would you take words to return to God? Why not bundles of wheat? Oil in clay jars? Fresh baked bread. Why not take salt? Red wine, purple cloth, things more like worship? Depending on the alphabet is risky with its creation of ambiguity Scratched onto vellum, paint on papyrus, so much lost in translation. Poems Written on napkins and grocery receipts. I can’t deny that I’m compelled, enticed even, To thrust my fingers into a bowl of letters and return Holding on for dear life, writing ‘lifeboat’ just in time, Yielding to the possible safety of the right word. Only language can tell our stories. Some letters generate echoes of the Utterly haunting past, mistakes, the resonance of the earth. Any word can be a talisman. I’ve always wanted to Nail down how civilization evolved into writing. I want to write the word Dromedary because the cadence mirrors the way it moves. Ridiculous of course, but I’d ride that one-hump camel to the oasis any day. Even the unvoiced desire can eventually be put into words, and spells To cure warts, whip up a tempest, make a magic potion. Unless words carry different weights like numbers and can be Rounded up or down. Someone show me the runes! Never mind, I’ve wandered off again, Too full of questions that can’t be answered Overwhelmed with finding a word to rhyme with orange, Grappling with the alphabet, the number of syllables in a perfect line, One too many or needing one less. It’s futile. Please take my words God, Do whatever it takes to return to me. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue First published in Utah Lake Stories: Reflections on a Living Landmark (Torrey House Press, 2022). I like to try different poetic forms. I had never tried the acrostic in a serious endeavor, but I found it to the be right fit for this poem and the idea of creating words as a means of returning to God. I also liked how it allowed me to turn the phrasing around so that God needed to return to me. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MAUREEN CLARK retired from the University of Utah where she taught writing for 20 years. She was the director of the University Writing Center from 2010-2014, and president of Writers@Work from 1999-2001. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review , Alaska Review , The Southeast Review , and Gettysburg Review among others. Her first book is This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024). Next - The Afternoon on the Sava by Scott Abbott Next

The Little House: Crystal City, Texas by Jeff Talmadge By the time my parents arrived at the prison after the War and with their first son, the 10-foot barbed wire fence was down, the towers and corner spotlights gone. The rifle-carrying guards who, around the clock, circled the perimeter on horseback, had returned to their old day jobs in that desolate place, not quite Mexico, not quite America, thirty-five miles from the border. When the Alien Enemy Detention Facility closed in the War’s shadow, the school district got most of it, opening the houses to others like that young couple and their toddler, who arrived from central Texas on a teacher’s pay, probably surprised that he, my father, was alive—and grateful, having come from nothing, to be living in what they called The Little House. If I could wish someone well who is in the past, I would wish it for them—that at least for that moment, they know some happiness in this life, believing, as they must have, inside someone else’s prison, that the worst was over, and they survived. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue After World War II, my family lived in what had been part of an internment camp for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent in Crystal City, Texas. This was before I was born, but my brother remembers it well, and always referred to it as “the little house.” It must have seemed like a miracle for my father to have returned alive. Here they were, having come from nothing, with a young child, starting a new life in that dry and distant place. I have few memories of them being happy and like to imagine that this was a happy time for them. Some of my description is indebted to Jan Jarboe Russell’s book, The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II (Scribner, 2015) and her related article in Texas Monthly . .................................................................................................................................................................................... Next - The Dream by Shanan Ballam Next JEFF TALMADGE was born in Uvalde, Texas, about 70 miles from the Mexican border and grew up in small towns like Crystal City, Wharton, Boling and Big Spring. At Duke University, he won the Academy of American Poets Award, and his poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He was a civil trial attorney in Austin before becoming a full-time musician. Jeff has received numerous awards for his songwriting. His most recent record is Sparrow . jefftalmadge.com

The Gospel of Overconsumption by Scott Abbott Saturday, August 26, 2023 The Salt Lake City Public Library auditorium is packed to overflowing this morning. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson has invited the public to a conversation about Terry Tempest Williams’ essay, “I Am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake,” published in The New York Times . We greet the discussants with warm applause as they step onto the stage: Mayor Wilson, Terry Tempest Williams, and my son Ben Abbott. Mayor Wilson describes the Sunday morning she found Terry’s essay in the Times . “My husband and I had a brunch date with friends. It’s going to have to wait, I told him. You can’t imagine what I’m reading.” She turns to Terry. “Would you tell us how your Times piece came about?” "The catalyst," Terry replies, “was the report published on January 4 of this year titled ‘Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse.’ Ben Abbott, BYU professor of ecology, was the lead author, with an impressive list of co-authors. Their scientific analysis was picked up in The Washington Post and other news outlets, including The New York Times. I know Great Salt Lake intimately; still, the report shocked me. I contacted Ben and asked if we could talk. A short visit lengthened to a four-hour conversation. Then a Times editor emailed me: Would I write something about the crisis? I sent her a 2000-word reply, confident she wouldn’t have time to read it. She read it. I began to write.” Terry unfurls the Sunday Review section of the Times , dated March 26, 2023. Accompanied by Fazal Sheikh’s beautiful, ominous photographs of the lake, the piece fills page after page. “Tell us more about the photographer,” Mayor Wilson requests. “Fazal Sheikh is a friend of mine, “Terry says. “We have worked on several environmental projects together, including one related to Bears Ears National Monument. I asked if he would contribute some recent photos of Great Salt Lake. He was hesitant. His work is collected in major museums of art, not really the stuff for newspapers. I reminded him that more people would see his work in this Times piece than would ever see it in person. Plus, I said, you really love Great Salt Lake; together we can do something for her. And so we did.” Terry raises a bundle of ten or twelve drafts of the essay, the work of the ensuing weeks. “The day the piece was to go to print,” Terry continues, “the editor sent me a final copy w ith my work stripped of feminine personal pronouns in reference to Great Salt Lake. They also took exception to my describing her as ‘my Mother Lake.’ This is not what we agreed, I told the editor. My body and the body of Great Salt Lake are one. You have separated us. Our style guide requires this, the editor replied. Then perhaps you should revise your style guide, I said. You understand that we’re going to press in a few hours! Not with my piece in this form. Give me a couple of minutes, the editor said. S he returned: we’ll do it your way.” In Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place , Terry’s cancer-assaulted mother and the lake and bird refuge overwhelmed by too much water are melded into a narrative drawing wisdom and solace from two mothers. The Times editor balked at the personification. That much-maligned trope, I think, can be revelatory. A couple of years ago, my friend of three decades, poet Alex Caldiero, visited volcanos in Italy and Sicily, seeking the physical presence of what he considered living beings. “I talked with fishermen at the docks overshadowed by Stromboli,” he told me. “Stromboli is our father, they said, powerful and strict. He tells us when to fish, where to fish, when the season begins and ends. If we follow the rules, everything is fine. When we don’t, there’s hell to pay. In Sicily, however, people describe Aetna as a nurturing mother who provides the best soil and lava rock for building. And when I asked about Vesuvius in Pompeii, people just laughed. He’s a monstrous, trickster uncle who can’t be trusted in any situation.” “Folklore,” Alex concluded, “gets to the souls of things.” Mayor Wilson turns to Ben. "Professor Abbott, tell us how your report came together?” When Ben is introduced as Professor Abbott, my mind spirals back to the moment I too was introduced as Professor Abbott on this very stage. It was October 7, 2005, the evening of Alex’s epic 50th Anniversary performance of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Sponsored by Ken Sanders Rare Books, the event packed the auditorium and filled overflow rooms with another 700 eager participants. The Will Lovell Quintet performed 50s-vintage jazz. Poets Ken Brewer, Andy Hoffmann, Sara Caldiero, Melissa Bond, Jean Howard, Sandy Anderson, and Paul Swenson sat in a semicircle behind the podium, as had poets Philip Lamantia, Mike McClure, Gary Snyder, and Phil Whalen at San Francisco’s 6 Gallery for the October 7, 1955 premiere of “Howl.” Lamantia later likened Ginsberg’s reading to “bringing two ends of an electrical wire together.” “Professor Scott Abbott,” Ken Sanders announced, “will give us a sense for that historical event.” I approached the podium, looked out over the audience, and protested: “Professor, my ass!” When Mayor Wilson refers to Ben as Professor, it makes sense, I tell myself. It’s a marker of Ben’s scientific credentials. But when I protested the moniker “professor” on this stage, the context was different. Ken Sanders’ brilliance doesn’t owe itself to a college degree. In fact, he once told our Utah Valley University students that he was a little nervous because the last time he had been in a classroom was in his junior year in high school when he and the principal agreed it would be in their shared best interests if Ken never returned to school. Alex sat in poet Norman Pritchard’s course at The New School but also cites his informal apprenticeship with sculptor Michael Lekakis as formative. At breakfast the morning after my friend and coauthor Žarko Radaković and I attended the premier of Peter Handke’s play Voyage by Dugout in Vienna’s Burgtheater, Handke asked what we thought of the play. I started to describe how skillfully I thought the play employed an actual experience the three of us had had in Višegrad during the civil wars that disintegrated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Doktor Scott , Handke broke in, Doktor Scott . . . always on the job! I am indeed a professor. I’m proud of that. But my nonacademic creative work is meaningful to me in its own way. Although she founded the graduate program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah, I don’t think of Terry as Professor Williams, but as Terry Tempest Williams, author. And beyond his scientific credentials, I know Ben as an extraordinary back-country skier, as a mountain biker excelling in hundredmile winter races outside Fairbanks, Alaska, as a gifted and soulful singer, as the profoundly generous father of four of my grandchildren, as the inquisitive young man who, carrying his pack into class during his unhoused second year at Utah State University, responded to his professor’s “that looks heavy!” with “not as heavy as what you are carrying.” Professor Doktor Ben Abbott responds to the Mayor’s request: “Our 2021 report on the Utah Lake ecosystem,” he says, “was a scientific critique of the attempt by ‘Lake Restoration Solutions’ to monetize Utah Lake by dredging and filling the lake with islands. In response, the developers filed a three-milliondollar defamation suit against me. Our science eventually won out and resulted in the demise of the real estate scheme.” Ben listed me as a co-author on the Utah Lake report—"Dr. Scott Abbott”—my contribution a thorough editing. "Dr." feels just right in that case. Identity is complicated. When the would-be island builders served Ben with a SLAPP suit, my co-author of Wild Rides and Wildflowers , Sam Rushforth and I congratulated him for the accomplishment. “Our environmental and academic activism has never attracted a SLAPP suit,” we lamented. “You have leapfrogged over us.” In 2016, Terry and Brooke Williams bid on two oil and gas leases offered by the BLM, planning to develop the leases only when “science supports a sustainable use of the oil and gas at an increased value given the costs of climate change to future generations.” The BLM rejected their bid, and the ensuing public response led to Terry leaving the University of Utah to accept a position as writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School where she offers a course on spirituality and Great Salt Lake. “For our next project,” Ben continues, “we decided to study Great Salt Lake, threatened, as it is, by drought and overconsumption of water. Contributors to the work included scientists and advocates from six universities, four nonprofits, and three working ecology professionals. Six BYU students contributed to the report, s did ten BYU faculty and staff members across five colleges. I don’t say that to brag about BYU, but to point out that universities in general are institutions structured to facilitate this kind of interdisciplinary problem solving. We wanted to post the report before the mid-January beginning of the state legislative session, so many of us spent Christmas break developing and refining the work. We concluded that excessive water use is destroying Great Salt Lake, that the lake is on track to disappear in five years, and that the consequences of losing the lake will be drastic. Our report, published on January 4th, called on the Governor and the legislature to take immediate action.” Bn pauses eand Terry breaks in: “Ben, your activism on our behalf is much appreciated, but the stress from your work is immense. You are so skinny! You’ve got to eat more steak.” “Thank you, Professor Abbott,” Mayor Wilson says with a big smile, “and thank you Terry Tempest Williams. We now invite questions from the audience.” Someone notes that alfalfa is the region’s biggest consumer of water. “What can be done to limit alfalfa growth?” “We all have family or friends whose livelihoods depend on growing alfalfa,” Ben says. “Any actions we make must take them into account.” He follows with a detailed description of possible solutions, including federal and state legislation that compensates farmers for losses and protects farmers who temporarily give up water rights. “All solutions to this problem,” he reminds us, “require trust. We must ensure financial, legal, and professional support for farmers during this transition.” Scott Carrier, sitting next to me, a wonderfully skilled narrator himself, whispers that Ben just ended his extended elaboration at exactly the same place he started. “How old is he?” “I’m not sure,” I answer. He looks at me askance. “How has this winter’s heavy snow affected the lake?” “I see the winter storms as acts of divine intervention,” Ben says, “a gift of time to remedy the situation ourselves. The only way to accomplish that will be to convert or shame promoters of the gospel of overconsumption.” "Divine intervention, my ass!" I whisper to Scott Carrier. "It's all good," he responds. I don't know anyone who can speak to scientists, legislators, and Mormons like Ben can. Whatever will spur people to action.” Another member of the audience says he heard Ben say in an interview that if we would only grow food for humans to eat and not food for animals that we then eat, that would solve the water problem. “I had a good response to the question,” Ben says, “but Terry just suggested that I needed to eat more steak. What can I say? My faith tradition,” he continues, “tells us that we should only eat meat when it is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, most of us don’t pay much attention to that.” In her Times piece, Terry also invokes her religious upbringing: Utah is my home. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints raised me to care about community in the fullness of Creation. We were taught through sacred texts, “The Pearl of Great Price,” among them: “For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth.” Great Salt Lake had a spirit before she had a body. Brine shrimp have a spirit. White pelicans and eared grebes have a spirit. They are loved by God as we are loved. Like Terry and Ben, I grew up in and developed an identity shaped by Mormon culture. One day, however, walking across the campus of Princeton University, a thought stopped me short: I don’t believe in God. That is still the case forty-some years later. Heavy snow through divine intervention? A lake with a spirit loved by God? What’s an atheist to do with this sort of thinking? Over the decades, I’ve learned to respect and to respond to Alex’s mysticism as metaphor. I don’t have to believe to find the ideas and images powerful. I’ll wear my atheism lightly in the presence of Ben and Terry, a man and a woman motivated and inspired by their own forms of belief. Spinoza’s Deus sive natura (“God or Nature”) and “Nature’s God” as enshrined in our Enlightenment-inspired Declaration of Independence will be my creeds. Mayor Wilson asks for final thoughts: “What can we do?” Terry and Ben both recommend that we press our federal and state legislators for concerted action. Ben lists specific legislative actions, recommends tiered water pricing, and asks that businesses, churches, and nonprofits work together in the service of Great Salt Lake. Terry ends the discussion by reading a passage from her Times essay: On the surface of the lake, small waves broke toward shore, creating salt lines, but beneath the water’s surface there appeared to be an undertow, an inner tide pulling water back toward the center. If Great Salt Lake is in retreat . . . She stops reading here, looks up, and repeats the word “retreat.” “ As a writer,” she says, “I know my own vocabulary. At this point something entered my mind that was not mine. I believe it was the lake, and what I heard her say was: ‘I am in retreat and it is not what you think.’” Terry returns to her text: If Great Salt Lake is in retreat, perhaps she is holding her breath, as do we who worry about her prognosis. To retreat, to withdraw momentarily to garner strength and perspective, can be a strategy. Retreat can be a conscious action: a period of time called for to pray and study quietly, to think carefully and regain one’s composure . . . to commit to a different way of being, to change one’s beliefs. How, I wonder as I leave the auditorium, does such committment arise? What can induce a change in beliefs? What might replace a gospel of overconsumption? At SITE Santa Fe this summer, art critic and historian Lucy Lippard co-curated a show titled Going with the Flow: Art, Action, and Western Waters. She argues that in times of crisis “artists can expose the social agendas that have formed the land.” Writers and scientists like Terry and Ben lead us toward re-forming our relationship to Great Salt Lake and its watershed. What form that takes will reveal who we are. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “The Gospel of Overconsumption” was commissioned by Torrey House Press for a book on Great Salt Lake meant for Utah legislators who have and will be considering ways to conserve the lake. When someone realized that it might not be just the righthing for that audience, I received a gracious rejection letter. I’m pleased it has found a home in THE NOMAD. .................................................................................................................................................................................... SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor 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 - Tiananmen Mother by Michael Wells Next

This Poem is Backlit by Alexandra van de Kamp by shoeshine clouds and wreathed in a resonant sneeze. This poem wants another cup of caffeine to take on the headlines again, with state legislatures voting mean. Can I have another umbrella, please, for this senior citizen whose been standing in the sultry heat, for the woman with the unkempt hair trying to vote as the rain drains down her rumpled coat? This poem smells of crushed sage from a walk in Spain and the mountain in North Wales I tried to climb when I was twenty. Note to self: avoid rubber-soled boots when knee-deep in snow and hiking with beer-smitten geology students. Dear Reader: Don’t underestimate how much it takes to get perspective on the moment you are in. This poem is a bouquet of yes’s—some of them happier than others, such as the yes to marrying my husband at 32. Not the yes to the Oxford grad I met on a London train who was aghast when I told him I was still a virgin and asked me back to a dingy hotel by the station. Not his hands like oil slick on my skin and the stare of the receptionist when we arrived, like I was some kidnapped teenage bride. This poem is a roll call on all that a poem can’t solve: the people who furl their tongues so silkily around a lie, gods of their own slick, gnarly gardens—the squash and radishes sweating in the August sun. This poem is not the height of the Eiffel Tower when you place its pages end-to-end, not the hotel where I stayed in the Latin Quarter, with its bulging walls and motorcycle bar downstairs. My sister and I had to pay 10 centimes to use the bathroom in the hall. This poem is not those centimes but it could, if required, become an umbrella, a tiny and limber roof of breath held over your soft and dimpled head. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I like this poem because of how it allows itself to make leaps from headlines and state legislatures to hiking in North Wales, youthful indiscretions, and needing 10 centimes to access a hotel bathroom in Paris. I thought of this as a type of ars poetica when I wrote it—a poem pushing at the boundaries of what could fit into one poem and, simultaneously, a poem describing what a poem can be. I also enjoy the sense of play at work here that allowed me to open up what I included within this poem. I’m not sure all the leaps and images cohere, but then I also like this poem for that! .................................................................................................................................................................................... ALEXANDRA VAN DE KAMP is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink, San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. Her most recent book of poems is Ricochet Script (Next Page Press, 2022). alexandravandekamppoet.com Next - Day Dreaming by Stacy Julin Next