< Back to Breakthroughs Issue NEVAH BETTAH Paula Harrington Not long after my mother died, my father bought himself a Panama hat. That might not seem like much of a sign. But he was a lifelong New Englander—a Bostonian, no less—and his usual headgear was an Irish tweed wool cap. So as soon as I saw his new straw affair, I knew it meant something. But what could that be, beyond the life-altering fact of my mother’s death? We were standing by the old electric stove in the kitchen, and he’d just put the kettle on to make himself “a cuppa.” No one else was up yet. He gave me that sidelong look of his and said—suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him—“Wait here a minute, Peach. I’ve got something to show you.” And off he walked to the back-hall closet. I watched him reach behind the woolens my family had kept jammed together on the top shelf for decades—mittens, gloves, scarves, caps—and take out a cardboard box. He brought it back into the kitchen, opened it on the counter, and put the Panama hat on his bald head. “Whad’ya think?” he asked. Well, all I could actually think at that moment was, where the hell did he find it? (This was back when nobody ordered online.) In Boston. In the dead of February. With snow blocking the front door. But find it, he had. Even at 76, Dad was a resourceful guy. “Lookin’ good,” I said, our family joke about appearance. “Thinking of taking a trip? “I’ll keep you posted,” he said, and proceeded to make his tea. Milk, two sugars. With his hat still on. The next morning found us near the same spot. Kettle going again. Panama hat put away. I’d woken up thinking I should say something about it, though. Try to find out more, make sure he was okay. He was standing at the sink, gazing out a window that looked down over a row of backyards receding in a slow slope to the Fore River and beyond that to the Boston skyline. It was a typical dreary February day, almost comically classic funereal weather. I took the leap, venturing to speak for my siblings as well as myself. “Dad, about the hat. About anything you do, really. Now that Mum is gone. We want you to know that whatever you do is fine with us. You did a great job taking care of her the whole time she was ill. So don’t worry about us. And, judging by how long Gramma lived, you could have fifteen more good years.” “You could be right.” He turned and looked at me with eyes that were still lively. “ I might live just about that long. If my luck holds.” And that was it, as far as this daughter and father could go in acknowledging all they had been through. The next day I flew back to California, where I’d been living for many years. It didn’t take long to learn where Dad was headed in his Panama hat. He was coming to see me. Well, not exactly. I was also his cover story. A week after I returned to California, he was on the phone. Which in itself showed we were in new territory; my mother had always been the one to call, with him pitching in a few words at the end. “How’s ya doin’, Peach?” “Good, Dad. You?” “Nevah bettah.” I laughed. He was back to his old jokes. And he had an announcement. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I’d like to take the train across the country. Never done that.” “Wow, Dad. Sounds like fun. Have you looked into it?” “I’m going to this week.” A week later, he called back, sounding more animated than I’d heard him in years. “Got all the particulars on my trip,” he said. “It’s looking good.” For the first time since I’d moved west two decades before, my father was coming to visit. It took him a few months to do it. Not due to second thoughts, though, just winter weather. In the meantime, he called me with updates. “I bought a ticket with an open date.” “Don’t think I’ll bother with a sleeper. It’s just three days and I can recline the seat all the way back.” “I have to change trains only once, in Chicago.” “I’m taking just one bag.” “The train’s delayed. Too much snow in the Rockies.” “I’m looking at late April.” Then one day he called and said, “I arrive on May 6th.” I scoured the platform for the clean-shaven father I'd known my whole life. When I didn’t see him, I started to worry. Could he have missed his transfer in Chicago? Not a chance. A man about Dad’s age and size was standing a few yards off; his hat gave him away. What fooled me at first were his mustache and goatee. “How d’ya like my new look? Somebody told me it’s called a Fu Manchu, but I think it’s a Van Dyke.” I was speechless for a couple of seconds but recovered quickly, as was our family practice. “Lookin’ good, Dad. But what I really like is your Panama hat.” He turned his head from side to side to give me the full effect: wide brim, blue band, jaunty tilt. You couldn’t miss the statement it was making. “Meet the new me, Peach.” “Yup,” I grinned. “I knew he was in there. Welcome to California.” As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person the new Dad was coming to see. My mother had a sister-in-law named Mary, who had married her brother Dan soon after he came home from World War II. Mum once told me he’d never been the same afterward. “His body was in one piece but his spirit was in bits,” she said. Still, he went on to meet and marry Mary, who’d become good friends with my mother during their wartime jobs as secretaries. Soon after that, my uncle and aunt struck out for Southern California, where they raised four children, cousins we barely knew when we were growing up back in Boston. Many years later, I too was living in California and had just gotten married myself. Uncle Dan’s health had deteriorated—apparently he drank a lot in his post-war years—and they moved in with their oldest son, who at that point lived about an hour from me. Then my uncle died. Soon Mary started flying back with me to see her old friend, my mother, who had become gravely ill herself. And on my final visit home before Mum’s death—the one that ended with her funeral and Dad’s new Panama hat—Mary was the only other person in our house besides our immediate family. She slept upstairs in a small bedroom that had once been my parents’. (Mum was sleeping by then in a hospital bed in the dining room, which we’d converted into a home hospice.) After my mother died, Mary stayed on with Dad for a couple of weeks. To keep him company, so my siblings and I could all return to our lives. She was a comfort to all of us. You can probably guess where all this is heading. Dad had traveled across the country not just to take the train trip or to visit me, the only one of his four kids who didn’t live in New England. He’d also come to see Mary. To find out if they might have a future together. True, she was nothing like Mum in most ways. She wasn’t as funny or as fierce. Not as smart or intellectual either. And she hadn’t been a redhead with freckles all over. But wasn’t that a good thing? Because who could compete with all that? Luckily, Mary had no urge even to try. She too had loved our mother and, besides, she was clearly her own person. Her way was to appreciate the humor and fierceness in others. She’d been a dark brunette with bright blue eyes, and proud of it. But she did share one important trait with Mum: Mary was just as kind. So it was that, a few days after Dad arrived, he and I drove down to see Mary at my cousin’s. Then we scooped her up—that’s how I always think of it: scooping her up, like a delightful child—and took her off with us. I recall the rest of that trip as if the three of us were traveling in some charmed bubble, a string of enchanted days that ran together with the soft beauty of a watercolor scene. I drove them all around the Bay Area, from Half Moon Bay to Richmond. Showed them places I’d lived over the years, Pacific beach cottages and Berkeley brown shingles. From fish shack to bridge lookout point we went, from a lighthouse hostel to a restaurant that had once been a brothel. And everywhere we stopped, Mary would give Dad and me the sweetest of smiles. “Oh,” she’d say. “This is so lovely. Thank you for taking me here.” I chuckled to myself, trying to imagine my mother in a state of such simple wonder. At Point Montara, I turned around to say something and caught sight of them holding hands. For about a year after that, they went back and forth from Boston to the Bay Area. My siblings and I knew what was happening but pretended not to. “Let them tell us in their own time,” one of my sisters said. Finally, when I was home for one of my visits—so strange now without my mother there—Dad called us all into the living room. Mary sat beside him on the old plush sofa, bolstered by pillows a neighbor friend had crocheted too many years ago to count. “We have something to tell you.” My siblings and I couldn’t look at each other for fear of grinning. “Mary and I have decided to live together, and we’d like your approval.” Then we told them how pleased – but not surprised – we were. Of course they had our “approval.” After that, the fabric of our family became seamless. Their lives—and now ours—flowed into each other's back and forth across decades. Mary told us stories about who our mother had been before any of us, including Dad, knew her. How Mum got a kick out of correcting boys in her class when they were wrong. How she’d taken a shy Mary under her wing at work, warning her to be careful of their bosses getting “handy.” How she’d fallen in love with a young Jewish man and been heartbroken when both families forbade a “religious intermarriage.” Our favorite story, of course, was the one about how our parents met. No surprise that Mary had been there. It happened at a USO dance at the Monhegan Hotel in New London, Connecticut. Dad was doing some training across the Thames River at the Groton Naval Base – he would go on to serve in the Merchant Marines in World War II – and our mother was working, along with Mary, in nearby Harford. Still sad about her ex-boyfriend, Mum didn’t want to go, but she was the only one with a car. So, in her kind way, she drove Mary and a couple of other girlfriends to the dance. As our mother always told it, Dad, who had a full head of black curls in those days, asked her to dance. The first thing she said to him was, “Who does your hair?” She still thought that was funny, forty years into their marriage. Mary, however, had a different version of the story. In hers, our mother had been taken by our father, a charming seaman, from the start. “I danced past once and saw her sitting at a table talking with him. Then I was amazed to see her still there the second time I went by. And the third. Your mother didn’t talk to just any guy, you know.” We didn’t, but we could imagine. Dad and Mary got married in the living room of my old house in Maine, where my husband, two kids, and I had moved a few years earlier. The pull of my family, the four seasons, and the Atlantic Ocean finally proved too strong. He was 86 when they made it official; she was 84. They stood before the mantle in our high-ceilinged living room with its leaded glass windows, my siblings and our spouses surrounding them. Mary wore a blue dress to match her eyes; Dad was in an Irish fisherman knit sweater. Our neighbor, an online minister, came over to do the honors. Then we all toasted them with champagne. “Welcome to the Harrington family,” my brother laughed. I remember that at one point, Mary leaned over and whispered to me. “I know your mother is looking down and smiling.” I can’t say I shared that belief. But I did know one thing. Mary wasn't only making our father happy, she was keeping our mother present in our lives. In the end, Dad and I had called it about right—he lived to be almost 91. So he and Mary did have nearly fifteen good years together. And, unlike my mother and uncle, both died quickly. Neither lingered or diminished into a different person from the one they’d once been. I was in the room at the hospital when Mary passed. Dad, of course, was there too. He held her hand in one of his own and gripped mine with his other. He kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, my girl.” Dad died a year later but I couldn’t be there. I was living in Paris with my family on a research grant, which had made him immensely proud. He’d fallen and broken a hip, and he chose not to undergo surgery and what would be a grueling, uncertain recovery. Instead, with his doctor’s agreement, he refused treatment and nourishment. Dad said his goodbyes on the phone to my husband and both of our now teenaged kids. Then they handed it to me. “I don’t want you to feel bad, Peach. This is what I want. I’ve had a good run.” Not even an hour later, my sister called back. “He’s gone.” I went and sat on the sofa in my Paris apartment. Let tears run down into the smile that was also on my face. I thought of him in his Panama hat on the train platform all those years before, how he’d kept moving when so many other people would have stayed put. I carry that image like a talisman. Because, as he might say, ya nevah know . A kind of companion piece to “The Dying Room,” "Nevah Bettah" tells the story of my father’s final chapter after my mother’s death, and my unexpectedly happy role in it. If her dying taught me to let go with love, his life afterward showed me the wisdom in moving forward. So my breakthrough came through his example: simply put, stay open and keep going. Previous PAULA HARRINGTON is a Maine writer and the former director of the Farnham Writers' Center at Colby College, where she also taught writing and literature. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris and is the author, with Ronald Jenn, of Mark Twain & France (University of Missouri, 2017). Her essays have appeared in Grande Dame Literary , Colby Magazine , and the Mark Twain Annual . Before entering academia, she was a newspaper reporter and columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Next

Pissing Toward the Sky by Jerry VanIeperen We’re watching the eclipse though we don’t know our astronomy. And it’s not warm enough to try kissing even in breezy May. I cannot sit bladder full of movie soda. Step out, look down ridge, unzip, without car lights or street lamps. Just our stillborn shadow on the moon above. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Published in Black Rock & Sage, Idaho State University’s creative writing journal. It has since become an ISU-enrolled student publication, but 1000 years ago, it was open to anybody. A few months before this poem was accepted, I had won the undergrad creative writing contest for poetry at Utah State University, and it felt like I was on a roll and it was a special time, which I didn’t appreciate until the benefit of hindsight. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JERRY VANIEPEREN lives heartily in Utah with two children, two dogs, and one wife. He earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska and was a founding editor of the poetry journal Sugar House Review. Next - Application for the Alien Exchange Program by Naomi Ulsted Next

The Lure of the Unfinished for Elise Cowen by Amy Gerstler intercepted mid brush stroke those who die young or trun- cated loom still wet with potential those who elude us who fled into death their echoes gnaw at our future and we the abandoned remain unfinished too friends/lovers/ interrupted mid gesture or caress given the slip by loves gone to fossil or scholars' fodder or life-size paper dolls we chase through dreams we cast them in roles they never auditioned for blurred wrecks at rest on the sea floor fish flit through their dissipating hulls sentiment clouds the water their incompleteness = infinite possibility how ravenously I wish her back during nights spent struggling (without success) to decipher her handwriting— Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This is a recent poem, sparked by reading the work of Elise Cowen, a female Beat poet whose small but intriguing body of work was a revelation. She died at 28, so I was left wanting more, troubled by regret about those who die young, wishing it could have been different. My excitement about her work was inextricable from an elegiac feeling. I'm fond of the poem because it's a document in which I try to contemplate and honor the effect her work had on me, and my sadness re: lives cut short. .................................................................................................................................................................................... AMY GERSTLER has published ten books of poetry and received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Los Angeles. poetryfoundation.org/poets/amy-gerstler Next Next - Reading by Natasha Saj é

Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room by Paul Fericano I can plainly see they are grateful and relieved to be inside off the streets where most of the neighbors are cautious suspicious troubled by their persistence their appearance their door-to-door politeness these two young gentlemen barely adult dressed in handsome dark blue suits slightly larger than their almost grown-man bodies clear sweet-voiced messengers who sit close to one another on my sofa enjoying the cookies I just baked the familiar aroma hanging in the air drifting into conversation like a memorable prayer in truth they can’t quite believe their good fortune their luck in finding me someone who really wants to hear what they have to say in this cozy container a refuge from the cold biblical ambiguities of this day thrilled actually to share their knowledge of God’s chosen plan for his people and so I bring it up I serve it up like holy communion: I want to know about men who marry other men I want to understand exactly what it is what it really means when we choose to be with one another without complaint I want to hear from these eager young missionaries I want to know what the question is but first I coax them to try the oatmeal raisin foolishly boasting that I use only the best ingredients just the right amount of sugar no coconut pointing out that when it comes to oatmeal cookies or anything else for that matter using coconut is the real sin here and I smile and I give them a wink and suddenly they both stand as if on cue startled these two sweet melodic declarations of truth on fire rapidly turning the pages of ancient texts in their heads searching for cautious pronouncements that arrive without warning these visiting angels who now ask in unison: Are you gay? Of course this is hardly the question I was expecting to hear and equally surprised I also stand now wiping my hands on my flowered apron and reply: Aren’t you? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This favorite unpublished poem of mine was written way back in 1980. Since it’s always been a lot of fun to perform, I’ve particularly enjoyed sharing it at a number of public readings over the years. For some reason I never felt compelled to submit it for publication anywhere (until now). It was initially written a few days after an unexpected visit to my apartment by the two young missionaries mentioned in the poem. It wasn’t until much later that I happened to learn that they had apparently tracked me down after following up on a tip from an old girlfriend of mine. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PAUL FERICANO is the author of Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance (Poems-For-All Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Bulitzer Prize. yunews.com Next - Sinatra, Sinatra by Paul Fericano Next

THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine delighted by what can be conveyed through words. Second Issue ................................................................................................................................................................... "FAVORITES" - 2024/2025 We've Been Out Dancing - poem Northern Climate II -poem ..................................................................................... by Gabriela Halas Some Things to Do in the Face of Death -poem The Concrete Poet - poem ..................................................................................... by Jim Lavilla-Havelin Bruce - poem Past Lives . . . That's Still a Thing, Right? - poem ..................................................................................... by J. Diego Frey Interstellar - poem Sunday Morning Early - poem ..................................................................................... by David Romtvedt Peach - poem Your Last Day in Madison - poem ..................................................................................... by Jennifer Tonge Stand Up Comedy - poem The Organization of Bones - poem ..................................................................................... by Joel Long Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us - memoir Fake Soldiers - nonfiction ..................................................................................... by Kase Johnstun First Sighting - poem Waiting Around - poem ..................................................................................... by Trish Hopkinson The Problem with Mrs. P - fiction That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival - fiction ..................................................................................... by Michael Shay Worry Poem - poem This Poem is Backlit - poem ..................................................................................... by Alexandra van de Kamp Day Dreaming - poem A Love for Loneliness - poem ..................................................................................... by Stacy Julin Michaelmas - poem For Hank Williams - poem ..................................................................................... by Lisa Bickmore The Other Man is Always French - poem The Barking Dogs of Taos - poem ..................................................................................... by Richard Peabody The Little Old Lady in the Woodstock T-Shirt - poem Frozen January Mornings - poem ..................................................................................... by Robert Cooperman Pilgrims in Argyll - poem Motives for Theft - fiction ..................................................................................... by Joseph Riddle Flag (2024) - poem Decoration Day - poem ..................................................................................... by M.L. Liebler Lincoln and Lydia - poem Predictions of the Past - poem ..................................................................................... by Alison Moore The Queen of Hell - nonfiction Ignatius - fiction ..................................................................................... by Karin Anderson Knotted Wrack - poem Acrostic Lifeboat - poem ..................................................................................... by Maureen Clark The Afternoon on the Sava - memoir The Gospel of Overconsumption - nonfiction ..................................................................................... by Scott Abbott Tiananmen Mother - poem And "Tenured" was Dropped from the Dictionary - poem ..................................................................................... by Michael Wells Mastering the Hunt - poem The Fox's Nonce Sonnet - poem ..................................................................................... by Lisa Chavez A Cat Place - poem Walking the Bear - poem ..................................................................................... by Star Coulbrooke The Glazier - poem Vespers in the Great Basin - poem ..................................................................................... by Danielle Beazer Dubrasky Kayaking on Hebron Lake - poem Ode to Everything - poem ..................................................................................... by Marjorie Maddox

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

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue SAFE GRAVY Alexandra van de Kamp —thanks to iPhone autocorrect I was trying to say safe travels I was trying to type to a sister boarding a plane, a sister with a sad way of arranging her face. I was trying to do justice to the August trees, to the way we drown in our thoughts a little each day. I’ve lost count of how many times list has become lust—bees became bras , and fees, frogs . I was trying to communicate my impressions: —the wind disco-ing between panic and glee —the articles on sloths I consume like piping hot Darjeeling tea. Did you know a sloth takes one month to digest a leaf? And I try not to mind when love becomes live because isn’t living a constant slipping? A to-ing and fro-ing around love, and its many misspellings? The other day, you became bayou —the self as slow-moving, murky, and rather sloppy outlet. I had to pause a bit, consider the geography and humid ramifications. But I admit I must quibble when fibs in the news fiddle with their bibs, drooling on all of us with their vertiginous spit! Fib, fib, fib! This world a masterful whodunnit, with its hiccupping detectives and missing witnesses; its opaque, shifting definitions. And just now, my sister’s name, Vikki , was 'corrected' to bikini. And all I could think was of Gidget, the 1959 surfer movie starring Sandra Dee, and how, in a matter of 95 minutes, teen angst and major life decisions can be solved perfectly along an endless stretch of California beach. "Safe Gravy" was published in Jet Fuel Review. A breakthrough to discover that words based on an annoying feature of my cellphone could be a poem published in a journal I respect. Moreover, when I read this poem in public, it often makes people laugh, which affirms how much I enjoy introducing humor into poetry; it unlocks emotional terrain and thoughts I would not have otherwise expressed, and widens the poem's world. Previous ALEXANDRA VAN DE KAMP is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink , San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. She is the author of the poetry collections Ricochet Script (Next Page Press, 2022), Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press, 2016), and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (WordTech, 2010). alexandravandekamppoet.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue SPRING CLEANING Terry Jude Miller In constant fear you’d become the hoarder your abusive father was, you toss everything that lacks immediate utility. You bring paint cans to the recycling center when you’ve used just a smidge of their subterfuge on a reclaimed nightstand or Mexican pottery planter. You discard me, finding no use for affection, for handholding in the movies, for anything more than a chicken peck of a kiss. Why keep something around that doesn’t work for you anymore? Your father’s backyard is full of motors with thrown rods and clothes dryers with defective doors. All go into the dumpster, where you place me beside the Texaco sign with burned-out bulbs and a length of chain missing its master link. "Spring Cleaning" was first published in Perennial , now Verdict Magazine. This poem describes a breakthrough by a companion that didn't turn out well for the poet. Previous TERRY JUDE MILLER works in academia in Houston, Texas. His poems have received multiple Pushcart nominations and have been published in Sontag Mag , Feed the Holy , Encore , Equinox , Trigger Warning Magazine , Exomorphosis , Ars Sententia , The Nature of Things , The Bayou Review , Boundless , the Poetry At Round Top Anthology , and forthcoming in Rattle . Miller is the former 1st Vice Chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. terryjudemiller.com Next

Mastering the Hunt In Britain, a "red woven hood" was the distinguishing mark of a prophetess or priestess. The story's original victim would not have been the red-clad Virgin but the hunter, as Lord of the Hunt. —The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Lisa Chavez We smell him before we sight him—human rank, scent threaded with death. The grandmother waits in the cave’s mouth on her haunches, scratching at fleas. We gather in the shadows, watch him approach. He is a northerner, pale mane tangled with leaves, hair on his face darker and ragged. He’s dressed in fur—on his head a cap fashioned of a wolf’s face, wizened by death. Empty eyes above his own. Some of us turn away from that gaze He is the master of the hunt, separated from his pack. It’s dusk, early autumn. We streak forward, register his surprise. From the cave, the grandmother howls with laughter. He cocks his head. Looks at us. What does he see? Our beauty. Our flowing hair and red caps. The tilt of our eyes, golden and curious. He relaxes. One of us nuzzles his throat; another lowers herself before him with beguiling glance. He feels our hands, our tongues. When he sees our teeth he falters, but we have already relieved him of his clothes, his spear. When the grandmother joins us, we finish what we’ve begun. Brindled in blood, we lick ourselves clean, our bellies distended as if with stone. Then we rise, shake off these pale skins and lope away beneath the trees, the sky pelt dark, and the moon watching like a wolf’s amber eye. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue Published in Red Rock Review and Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press, 2015). I have long been interested in fairy tales, especially ones that involve animals and transformation. This published poem was part of a series I was writing about animals and transformation. I always rooted for the animals as a child, and was particularly disturbed by the wolf’s death in “Little Red Riding Hood.” I suppose this poem is my way of finding justice for the wolves. .................................................................................................................................................................................... LISA CHAVEZ is a poet and memoirist from Alaska now living in the mountains of New Mexico with a pack of Japanese dogs. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico and is the author of In An Angry Season (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Destruction Bay (West End Press, 1998). Next - The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Next

Sinatra, Sinatra by Paul Fericano Sexual reference: a protruding sinatra is often laughed at by serious women. Medical procedure: a malignant sinatra must be cut out by a skilled surgeon. Violent persuasion: a sawed-off sinatra is a dangerous weapon at close range. Congressional question: Do you deny the charge of ever being involved in organized sinatra? Prepared statement: Kiss my sinatra. Blow it out your sinatra. Financial question: Will supply-side sinatra halt inflation? Empty expression: The sinatra stops here. The sinatra is quicker than the eye. Strategic question: Do you think it’s possible to win a limited nuclear sinatra? Stupid assertion: Eat sinatra. Hail Mary full of sinatra. Serious reflection: Sinatra this, sinatra that. Sinatra do, sinatra don’t. Sinatra come, sinatra go. There’s no sinatra like show sinatra. Historical question: Is the poet who wrote this poem still alive? Biblical fact: Man does not live by sinatra alone. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue “Sinatra, Sinatra” was responsible for cementing (pun intended) my so-called reputation as a social and political satirist. Being an outlaw member of a poetry scene that seemed to have little interest in, or understanding of, the art of satire, I was constantly pushing myself and the envelope. The poem, a takedown of extreme conservative politics that used Sinatra’s name in vain, was completed in early 1982 after many drafts. The poem actually managed to attract the attention of Frank Sinatra and get under his skin (again, pun intended). It provoked some poetry lovers to dismiss me and the poem outright (this was, after all, the Reagan era). But it also motivated many others who didn’t really read poems to actually read mine. This favorite was the lynchpin for the 1982 Howitzer Prize, a literary hoax that mocked the absurdity of all competitive awards. After the intended target (Poets & Writers) was hit dead center, I dutifully exposed the hoax myself. This caused the usual righteous indignation and predictable blacklisting. But the overwhelming support of those who clearly got the message (and the joke) was all the more satisfying. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PAUL FERICANO is the author of Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance (Poems-For-All Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Bulitzer Prize. yunews.com Next - Sacrament Meeting Started the Three Hours of Church on Sunday by Natalie Padilla Young Next

Village Fiddle by Ken Waldman I toted my junker, side seam already cracked, an old cheap box of wood that would take the steep banks of small planes aiming for runways, the bumps and jostles of sleds hooked to snowmachines, the ice, the wind, nights in the villages. Higher education missionary, I made rounds to students' homes (where I visited, but never fit), to liaisons' offices (where the state-issued equipment sometimes worked), to the local high schools and elementaries (where I volunteered service)— fiddle closer to my heart than the backpack full of books. Indeed, closer to my heart than the frozen broken truth: a bloody pump buried in utter darkness. Quick to unsnap the case, I scratched tunes where no one had, played real-life old-time music to Eskimos and the odd whites in that weathered land. The Pied Fiddler, I might have been, gently placing the beat-up instrument in others' hands, giving up the bow . Good for smiles and laughs. Random questions and comments. A third-grader: It must be like having a dog making noise— you must never get lonely. A high-schooler: Is it hard to learn? One of my college students: Why are you out here? Where is your family? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue First published in High Plains Literary Review, and Nome Poems (West End Press, 2000). From 1990-1992 I was the one-person English Department at the Nome Campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where I taught mostly over the phone, and occasionally flew to Native villages to encourage my students to keep at it. Each village also had a school, which I'd visit as part of my service. In classrooms, I'd share both my fiddling and writing exercises. I can't emphasize enough how distant these communities are. In one, a teacher mentioned how her students had never seen a violin before, a remark which led to me writing this, my all-time favorite. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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. kenwaldman.com and trumpsonnets.com Next - New Orleans Villanelle by Ken Waldman Next