The Problem with Mrs. P by Michael Shay First problem: nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore Gloria’s house. Second problem: she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking. Third problem: her damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile drive into Cheyenne, ten if you factored in the hospital which was downtown. Fourth problem: the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was supposed to. She had her own prepaid cell phone with a few minutes still left on it. But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen. Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying. She tried to bite back the tears, but they came anyway, raining down on her nightie, the blood-soaked towel, the tiled bathroom floor. It was all so ridiculous. Why had this happened? She should have known better than to let him back into her life, even if it had only been two weeks. He came back to her, all humble and lovey-dovey. She took him back into her bed and then he was gone again and there she was, pregnant again, standing in the doorway, bleeding to death. Her main problem was getting down the stairs to the phone. Clinging to the wall, she made her way out of the bathroom and down the carpeted hallway. To the left was her daughter Kelly’s room. She grabbed the doorknob of the hall closet as she slowly passed. There were only twelve stairs but it looked like a million. Maybe if she just sat on the top step, and bumped her way down….She sat, a good thing since a swoon was coming on. She waited for her head to clear, then carefully slipped down the carpet onto the second step, then the third one. On the next one, her left foot caught the hem of her wool nightgown. She fell back, then felt herself slipping down the stairway; her feet, her butt, her shoulders bumping with each step; wincing in pain as the vibrations traveled to her belly. When she came to a stop, she noticed the quiet of the house. There was some sort of noise coming from outside the front door. She didn’t know what it was but she stood and, after letting her head clear momentarily, stepped slowly through the sparsely furnished living room toward the door. Which led to the morning’s sixth problem: she passed out, sliding to the floor like a wet sack. * * * Mrs. P! Mrs. P! She opened her eyes. A big hairy head swam in front of her. Maybe she was dreaming. Mrs. P! Mrs. P! It was the big head’s voice. For a minute she thought it was Robbie but her husband was thin and had a buzzcut in keeping with his role as a punk musician on the make. Who was it? And where was she? For a minute, she hoped she was safe in bed. But then she felt the rough carpet under her, the stickiness between her legs. There was a big hand on her shoulder, shaking gently. Mrs. P! The hairy head’s voice again. She wanted to say: My name is Liz, short for Elizabeth, and not Mrs. P, short for Politazzaro, Robbie’s last name which he had hung on her, presumably forever, and which everyone seemed to want to use in the abbreviated form, making her seem old before her time. She could see the man now. It was Big Ed, her landlord’s goofy son. The Retard, Robbie called him, as if he had a right to call anybody that. Big Ed was a lumbering overgrown kid, slow, who probably had a birth defect or something. But, last summer, he had been dedicated to mowing the weeds that passed for their lawn. That winter, he had pursued the snow with a vengeance. He unclogged toilets and hauled the trash. The girls had been afraid of him at first. Six-foot-five if he was an inch, and built like one of those no-neck linemen you see on NFL football. And that hair, a mass of wavy red curls that framed that moon face of his. But one summer afternoon he came over driving the tractor with the haywagon attached. He asked the girls if they wanted a ride and they said yes and they tooled around the property as she watched from the kitchen window. A few hours later the girls came in screaming, waving something that looked like a rope above their heads. Snake! Snake! they yelled, then told her how Big Ed had whacked the head off a rattler with a hoe and skinned it right there on the spot. He gave the girls the skin and the rattles. This is one big freakin’ snake, Mommy , said Kelly, the youngest, sounding just like her father, New York accent and all. Mrs. P? What are you doing here, Ed? Heard you yellin’ while I was shoveling the snow. Was I yelling? He looked puzzled. Somebody was. Call the hospital, Big Ed, she said weakly. I’m bleeding to death. Hospital , Big Ed muttered. It was strange voice that blended a kid’s cadence with the huskiness of a man. She felt his arms slide under her and, next thing she knew, she was being transported through the living room and out into the cold bright winter day. You’re light , he said, pressing her in his arms. Get my towel, Ed , she said. And I need the phone. Don’t have a phone , he replied. Big Jim took it away. Said it was costin’ him an arm and a leg. Big Jim was his father, their landlord, a big fat guy who seemed eternally pissed off at his slow son. Get my cell, she said, motioning back to the house. It’s on the kitchen table. And the towel, Ed, for the blood. I know where the hospital is, he said. I drove Big Jim there. Remember that time the tractor rolled over on him? She didn’t remember and it didn’t matter anyway. Big Ed had plans and there was nothing she could do. Die on the bathroom floor. Die on the way to the hospital. She opened her eyes and saw ice crystals glinting in a blue-drenched sky. She heard the crunch of Big Ed’s boots in the snow. The wind slapped her bare, bloody legs. I’m cold, Ed. Get you in the van and warm it up, he said. They stopped. Ed’s right arm shifted and she heard a door being pulled open. Crud , he said. Gotta move some things around. She could feel his indecision. This might be too much for him. We can still call 9-1-1 on my phone . No need , he said briskly. She felt a tug, then Ed was arranging something on the ground. He put her down on something cold and plastic, then placed a covering over her. Tarp and sleeping bag, he said. My camping stuff. I keep it in the van. Camping? Well, she was getting warm on the snowy ground. She could see Big Ed shove his body in the van’s side door. His shoulders moved like a machine. She had seen this van dozens of times. Usually she heard it first as it came down the county road and into the dusty drive, its rackety Volkswagen clatter floating in the window across the open Wyoming prairie. She had often wondered why he had this old hippie van and not a huge mud-spattered pick-up like his dad. Ed, I can sit up front , she said. We do need to get to the hospital. Take a minute, he said. Got a mattress in here and everything. She wanted to laugh. There was a racket of shifting and moving. Then she was up again, fitting neatly through the van’s open door. She was on the mattress, which was comfortable and didn’t smell, which surprised her. She looked up and saw Big Ed smile as he covered her with the sleeping bag. Hurry, Ed, she said. Please . A look of concern flashed across his face as he slammed the door shut. Another door opened, and she felt the van shift to the driver’s side. Big Ed was on the bus, taking her to the hospital. They would be there soon and all would be well. She wouldn’t die and the baby would be born and she would call him anything except for Robbie and maybe she would get a divorce and go back to work at a grocery store where she used to make pretty good money. Crud . That was Big Ed. What’s the matter? Van won’t start. Don’t worry. I know what’s wrong. So she was going to die? Don’t worry, Mrs. P. This happens all the time. She heard him fumbling around in the front, obviously looking for something. Then he said Ah-ha and she looked up to see him brandishing a foot-long screwdriver. The sun glinted off its metal shaft, giving it the look of a knife. Go ahead, she thought, plunge it right into my heart and get it over with. The van leaped up as it lightened its load. She heard his boots crunch the snow, then a couple of grunts. The van shifted slightly, and she figured he was underneath, groping for some gizmo or another. Then came the dreaded word again—Crud— and after a few grunts and groans, he was back with his head shoved into the driver’s side. Got a problem, he said. Need you to turn the key as I do this. Do what? Bridge the solenoid. What the hell, Ed, she said. I’m bleeding to death here. Hospital , he said. Gotta get the van started. She breathed deeply. She had a tom cat for a husband. Her father abandoned her decades ago. Now her life depended on this dimwit? Men were such worthless creatures. And she was going to give birth to another one? It didn’t make any sense but she would be damned and damned again if she would stay here and die. She wanted to be with her girls. She wanted to be anywhere but here. Mrs. P pushed herself off the mattress. Fireflies danced in front of her eyes. Her big bloated body felt as if it belonged to someone else, or something else, like an African elephant or one of those strange looking sea lions she had seen at the zoo when she was a kid. But she moved, slowly, inching her way out of the van and onto her bare feet in the snow. Where you goin’? asked Big Ed. Inside to call the ambulance. Or walk to town. Anything but this. You can’t. I can. She still was bleeding, that was a fact, but she knew from experience that she wasn’t in labor, which was good, because the last thing she wanted to do was deliver this baby two months early in the snowy yard with only Big Ed for assistance. Although she hadn’t felt any of the baby’s trademark kicks this morning, intuition told her that he still was alive. The house was a hundred feet away and if she could just reach the door and get inside, she could get to her cell phone, call the ambulance, and then take her chances. But those chances were better than the ones she had now. She walked five steps—she was counting each one— before a whole flock of fireflies filled her vision and the house kicked up at a strange angle, flying off into space, leaving her on her side in the snow. * * * She was nineteen —that wasn’t even ten years ago—and home from college for Christmas break when she had met Robbie. He was bass guitarist for the group that was playing at the local bar on New Year’s Eve. She was with her high school girlfriends. They all thought the band guys were hot so they hung around after midnight and bought the band some drinks and at 5 a.m. they found themselves at some dumpy house in Jericho, she and her girlfriends making out with the band guys. Robbie was a good kisser. He wanted more, of course, but she wasn’t that looped and she liked him when he didn’t press her. He even gave her a ride home in the band’s van, startling her mother when she sashayed into the kitchen, carrying her shoes in her hand. I’m in love, she said, which surprised her and made Mom cry. The tear ducts really opened once she learned that Robbie was a rocker with pierced lip and nose. She shared that last part with her mother, just to see if the response would measure up to her expectations. It did. She was two months pregnant when they got married that June. Nobody knew yet, except her mom and maybe one or two of her closest friends. Robbie’s band, The Spectral Losers, played at the reception. The honeymoon was short. Robbie was awake all night banging away at her, even when she was dozing off from the champagne. She shouldn’t have been drinking. Her mom told her to cool it a couple times. She promised that she would quit right after the reception, which she did, except for a couple little sips of wine now and again. The morning after she puked her guts out with morning sickness while Robbie snored away in the motel’s vibrating queen-sized bed. Not a terrific start to their marriage. She and Robbie were split up when Katie was born. She was living with her parents and her mom took care of Katie when she went back to work a few weeks later. She was just getting back on her feet when Robbie came back into her life and she turned up pregnant again. That’s when her mother kicked her out. She and Robbie found an apartment closer to the city, so Robbie could go in nights and play at the clubs and not come home until dawn. She could not believe they were in that apartment for three years. Robbie brought home most of his pay. She was working, although a good chunk of it went to daycare for Katie and Kelly. Still, they were making it. Taking the pill helped put a damper on any more baby-making. Then Robbie came home one day and announced they were moving to Wyoming. She about hit the ceiling. One of Robbie’s friends owned a music store in Cheyenne. He liked the idea of going West. So they had moved cross-country and here she was, bleeding in the snow like some pioneer woman from the olden days. But she wasn’t in the snow anymore. She was moving along on some vehicle that wasn’t the van. She shifted her body and felt the crunch and crackle of something underneath. She opened her eyes to the bright sunlight. Hey! It was Ed’s voice. She pushed up on her elbow. She was stuffed in a sleeping bag, surrounded by a tangle of hay stalks. Weathered gray boards marked the wagon’s periphery. She craned her neck to the front to see the massive frame of big Ed bouncing on the seat of a green tractor. The tractor’s engine had a throaty roar that actually sounded good to her. At least they were moving. Got your cell phone, he yelled. What? Phone. Big Ed jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. She looked down and saw the cheapo black cell phone resting on the dark-green sleeping bag. Her mother had sent her a gift certificate and she had used it to buy this pre-paid cell phone which she kept hidden from Robbie, especially after the regular phone service was cut off. She picked it up. The plastic phone was cold in her hand. She dialed 9-11. It rang twice before a mechanical voice said from somewhere very far away: Your Celluphone pre-paid calling service has expired. Shit , she said. Had there been more minutes on her phone? Or had she just imagined it? What? yelled Big Ed. The computerized female voice said: Dial one if you want to add minutes to your service with your credit card. Fat chance, she muttered. Dial two if you wish to talk to a customer service representative to renew your service. She punched two. A few clicks followed. Then she heard a new voice: All our customer service representatives are busy. Please hold on and one will be with you shortly. Canned music came on the line. She felt like heaving the phone into the prairie. She imagined it sailing over the barbed wire fence and falling into a patch of snow-whipped weeds, right at the feet on those blankeyed black cows she always saw wandering the open fields. But not today. She liked the little phone. It was her only link to the outside world, which was very remote. She suddenly realized why Robbie had moved them so far away from town. She and the girls were isolated, dependent on him. He had the car 90 percent of the time. Got a gig, babe, he would say, then be gone for a week. They would be down to their last crust of bread when he would magically arrive laden with grocery sacks. Junk food, mostly, heavy on donuts and ice cream and chips. His idea of dinner was warming up some macaroni and cheese, maybe cutting up some hot dogs, mixing them in. She got queasy just thinking about it. Dinner would be over and Robbie would be off again to a gig or recording session or God knows where or, maybe, she did know where. You okay? shouted Big Ed. Just fine, she said. Just dandy, using one of the westernisms she’d learned since coming to Wyoming. She was not going to cry, no matter what. I am not going to cry, she said out loud. I am not going to cry. What? called Big Ed. Nothing, Ed. What? They moved slowly down the rural road, but she felt each bump. The clouds were traveling faster than they were. Any increase in velocity and she might go flying from the haywagon. A man’s voice finally came on the other end of the phone. Thanks for calling Celluphone, he said cheerily. How may I assist you today? She almost laughed at that. Assist? Hah! Get me off this wagon and into the nearest hospital. Hello , said the voice. Hi , she said weakly. I’m here . I see that I am talking to a Mrs. Politazzaro of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Yes , she said. Nice Irish name, he said. Listen…. Call me Mark , he said. Mark Aloysius Kincannon is my full name, but they tell you to use only your first just in case we piss people off. Listen, Mark, I’m in a bit of a fix here…. We have a variety of payment plans to fit your needs. A wind gust rocked the wagon. Mark, are you reading that? They give us a script, if that’s what you mean. Where are you, Mark? Denver , he said, in a little airless, windowless room in the basement of a gray building. Guess where I am, Mark? In a cozy kitchen baking cookies? Don’t hang up, she said. Please. I got a real problem here and I’m asking for your help. There was another pause. This is real, isn’t it? His voice had changed, serious now. It’s real. She gave him a condensed version of the morning’s events. A haywagon? he said. Riding to the hospital in a haywagon? Down a nice country road, she said. Nice winter day. Can you go faster? It’s an old tractor, Mark. Are you passing any houses? You could stop at one and get some help. Nice suggestion, but Big Ed won’t stop. He’s determined to get me to the hospital. He’s a little slow, in the head. Is that what you mean? That’s right. You’re not going to make it. That’s right, she said, trying to imagine, for the first time, what Mark might look like. Okay , said Mark, suddenly businesslike. Give me your position and I’ll call it in. Promise? Promise. Now, where are you? On a country road north of town. Which one? What do you mean, which one? Listen, uh, what’s your name anyway? Mrs. Pol……… Your first name. Liz. Listen, Liz, there’s got to be more than one road north of town. What’s its number? She raised her head and looked for a sign along the side of the road. Nothing but fence posts. Hey Ed! she yelled, taking the phone away from her ear. What? he said, turning to her. His shaggy red hair billowed like a wind-whipped fire. What road is this? She could not see Ed’s face, but she imagined it scrunched up in some sort of thoughtful look. But this thought was taking its time and she was running out of it. Ed! she barked. Some call it the Old Chugwater Road. The Old Chugwater Road, she repeated into the phone. What about a number? She cursed under her breath. Does it have a number, Ed? Don’t know a number. No number , she told Mark. She heard chatter on the other end. Look , said Mark, coming back on the line. I’ve got another CSR on the phone to the Sheriff’s Department and the dispatcher says there are two Old Chugwater Roads. Two? Yeah, one still goes to Chugwater and the other doesn’t. Which one are you on? It’s north of town, she said brusquely. It’s where you go out north on Yellowstone Road and it turns into a two-lane and you come to a stop sign and you keep going out that rural road another five miles or so. Our little farmhouse is just before you come to that big curve…. Hold on, Liz, Mark said. More chatter on the other end. County Road 237? If you say so. We should tell the ambulance to look for a tractor pulling a haywagon, right? Can’t miss us, she said. Green tractor, with Big Ed driving. Me bleeding to death in the haywagon in the back. He laughed. Not so funny, Mark. Right. I’m sorry. More chatter on the far end on the line in Denver. The ambulance is on its way, Mark said, almost breathlessly. No joke? No joke. Stay on the line and talk to me. Okay, sure, I’ll talk to you. Then he was so quiet she thought the line had gone dead. Got a family, Mark? she said weakly. Got a five-year-old boy who lives with my ex-wife. That’s nice, she said. Think we’ll get our names in the paper? Ha ha, she said. Names in the paper. She removed the phone from her ear. Ed! What! Big Ed answered. Ambulance on its way. What? At least that’s what she thought he said. The wind shredded the words on their way from his mouth to her ears. Waaa , it sounded like. Then wawa , just like the word the girls used for water when they were toddlers. We want wawa Mommy , and she would get them water in those little paper cups she kept by the kitchen sink. The girls would spill it and there would be wawa everywhere. W awa , she said to the wind, the sky, the wagon. She was so thirsty. Her head ached. The cold crept through the folds of the sleeping bag. She heard a voice and didn’t know if it was Ed’s or Mark’s or the lowing of a cow or something she had never heard before. Waaaaa! she heard, wondering if it was just in her head or maybe, just maybe, was the distant wail of an ambulance. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I wrote “The Problem with Mrs. P” for my first collection, The Weight of a Body (Ghost Road Press, 2006). It was included in a 2010 Coffee House Press anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams . It’s about a real event that happened to a friend. I transformed it into a short ction with invented characters. It’s set during winter in Wyoming, a season for adventures and misadventures. When I read it in public, I like that it elicits both laughter and gasps. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MICHAEL SHAY writes short stories and essays. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams from Coffee House Press. His first book of short stories is The Weight of the Body . He recently completed an historical novel set in 1919 Colorado with the working title Zeppelins over Denver . Next - That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival by Michael Shay 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

READINGS BY AUTHORS FROM THE NOMAD Intro - Ken Waldman Austin Holmes Jennifer Tonge Kase Johnstun Rachel White Karin Anderson Lisa Bickmore Maureen Clark Ken Waldman 00:00 / 00:28 00:00 / 08:06 00:00 / 10:03 00:00 / 07:43 00:00 / 05:52 00:00 / 08:20 00:00 / 09:55 00:00 / 07:15 00:00 / 23:40 UTAH BOOK FESTIVAL

The Worrier by Nancy Takacs Now that you are her, what will you do? I’ll walk across the swinging bridge and light a clove cigarette. How will you roam? I’ll drive a Packard convertible, my man in a long dark coat beside me. In the countryside, where will you land, and what will you eat? We’ll find a bar in northern Wisconsin. We won’t eat. What are you wearing, and what do you look like? An indigo dress, a little black cloche. I’ve outlined my lips to look like a sweet maroon bow. What songs will you sing? “Heart of My Heart” And “I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.” Who will know you better than anyone? My silk chemise. What undergarments do you wear? None. What tree do you wear instead? The plum. Why? Because it’s a palm full of dusk. What word will you use? Flagrant. It’s time for this. Where does the word go? It rises from under my bare feet when I leave the beach. What is strange about you now? There is nothing strange. What is common? I have loved the first light. Where does the light go? It goes under the letters in captions of what I say. Where does the scent go? It goes into my eyes, my mouth, the way I turn my head so that you will imagine lilacs. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Initially printed in The Tampa Review and The Worrier: Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). I guess this poem is a favorite of mine, as it’s the first Worrier poem I wrote, and it called me back to write more Worriers, that became a book. I like the film star because she is strong, even though she is, in a sense, voiceless. However, in the poem, she has a voice. She takes charge of where she is going, is confident about her choices, and plays with the reader a bit. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NANCY TAKACS is an avid boater, hiker, and mushroom forager. She lives near the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in northern Wisconsin, and in the high-desert town of Wellington, Utah. Her latest book of poems is Dearest Water . nancytakacs.org Next - Junk Email by Nancy Takacs Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue HAIRBRUSH David Romanda I hand her a hairbrush (her brush). You have the floor , I say. She says, Brush or no brush, you’re going to interrupt me before I can finish. That’s bullshit , I say. See? she says. You finished your sentence , I say. At least twenty seconds pass. She’s holding the brush, but doesn’t speak. I reach for the brush. She shakes her head. She says, I’m not finished. “Hairbrush” was originally published in Columbia Review . Often, when you’re fighting (arguing) in a relationship, neither party is completely “following the rules”—that’s the breakthrough in this one. Previous DAVID ROMANDA 'S work has appeared in places such as Columbia Review , Poetry Ireland Review , and PRISM international . He is the author of three books, including Your Lover Stabbed in the Streets (Frontenac House, 2025). Romanda lives in Kawasaki City, Japan. romandapoetry.com Next

Something To Surrender To by Austin Holmes fear vibrates between flesh ricocheting off bone nothing is truly inviolable upon recollection time reveals the seams and how to split them every year I seem to unlearn my understanding of life the residue of memory clinging to me like cosmic dust mingling to new forms without purpose yet at night I stare upward at the damselflies like dark strands of vitreous on the retina of the clouds darting away as the eyes chase them before the sun arrives from the unwinding dark the old notes of night’s world fade as though lightly fallen upon the skin of a dream and I give myself to it Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue The last few years have increasingly taught me that acceptance of human fragility and the ability to be vulnerable is an immense strength, and that often, when feeling crushed by the weight of things we cannot control, it is the intimacy of small moments that bring me back to Earth. .................................................................................................................................................................................... AUSTIN HOLMES lives in southern Utah, where he spends life with his beloved partner and their dog. He contemplates what he can and falls in love with the sky daily anew. Next - Bone Suite by Austin Holmes Next

we've been out dancing by Gabriela Halas Throb of blood flows like sweet sap to rhythms both old, and unorthodox. Could the pluck of grass be set to measure? The pull of water from an upturned palm be set to song? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Currrent Issue Sometimes the beauty of poetry is in its simplicity—the ability to convey a lot w ith so little, in tangible, literal words. Nothing shrouded, nothing obscure or abstract. The word 'simplicity' is not often used in a positive way with poetry but I feel like that can be such a strength. The poem "we've been out dancing" is just that, a way to celebrate movement in our bodies that feels both ancien and like we are experiencing it for the first time. .................................................................................................................................................................................... GABRIELA HALAS immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in British Columbia. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including The Antigonish Review , Cider Press Review , About Place Journal , Prairie Fire , december magazine , and The Hopper , among others; fiction in Room Magazine , Ruminate , The Hopper , and subTerrain, among others; and nonfiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Whitefish Review , Grain , Pilgrimage , and High Country News . She won first prize for her poetry chapbook Bloodwater Tint from Backbone Press (forthcoming). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives and writes on Ktunaxa Nation land. gabrielahalas.org Next - northern climate II by Gabriela Halas Next

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

The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Across the river, trotting, the fox. Who pauses to test the river’s rotten ice with ginger step. Will she trust it this late in the year? She draws back her paw, licks. Appraises the river’s dangerous skin. Looks at me as if to say what purpose, these stories, that make fable of my life? None, I say, but the sheen of dream and magic they lend to our lives. She cocks her head, considering. Squats to piss. She is just an animal, marking with scent. She scratches at her haunch, stands to shake herself, is gone. I’m left alone on the human side, in this territory demarcated by words. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This unpublished poem was inspired by stories of fox wives, animals who transform into humans. This is the final poem of a series that didn’t quite materialize. The poem reflects the longing I felt as I wrote: I wanted transformation too, but to escape words and human constructions. This poem points to the impossibility of that and returns from myth to the real world of the fox. It’s also my only poem written in form. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - A Cat Place by Star Coulbrooke 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

< 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

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