Star Coulbrooke < Back to Breakthroughs Issue RED CAMARO Star Coulbrooke 00:00 / 02:47 RED CAMARO Star Coulbrooke Monday, September 1st, 1997. I’ve had this Camaro ten years to the day. Got it when I was thirty-six, in the prime of my life. Red Camaro Sport Coupe with a story. Today I’m selling it to my neighbor for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday. The daughter, pouty smile, dark curly hair, bare feet, and a wild reputation came over for a test drive Friday night. Said, when she came back after fifteen minutes, My dad told me if I liked it I could have it. I really like it. I’ve liked it too. I’ve loved that red Camaro. Loved it and depended on it, bought it from a friend, used it for my job selling insurance and investments. That car was the wild card I drew when my husband, who had a couple of lucid months toward the end of our 23 ½-year marriage, my husband who was feeling magnanimous said, Why don’t we refinance the house and buy you a car? You choose the one. My husband, chastened by his last few escapades against the doctrine of marriage and continuing in a rare stretch of generosity, did not complain when I added to the mortgage loan our daughter’s wedding and a full set of furniture for our recently-finished basement. By the time his mood swung back to surly, I’d made my plan of escape. The title was in my name. I had the keys. I stepped on the gas pedal and raced right out of my old life. Kept the new furniture. Found an apartment I couldn’t keep—couldn’t pay rent and utilities working part-time and going back to school—so I gave the furniture to the married daughter who sold it when she ran into hard times. Now I’m selling the red Camaro, my symbol of freedom. It’s a blood-letting. I’m weak and shaky with anticipation. That wild young neighbor girl will drive it to school and boys will chase her and she’ll get in trouble. But it will give her new freedom, that car, and maybe it will give her life new meaning. Yes, this is the way I’ll imagine it all. The men in her life will find they don’t own her. Just like I did, she’ll escape in that declaration of red Camaro, that symbol of wildness and freedom, that independent woman’s car. When Covid hit in March 2020, I retired from my job at Utah State University, helped my husband build an addition on our house, and took care of him until he died from cancer in June 2023. I thought I had lost my ability to write poetry. But I turned to memoir writing and started mining pieces from my old journals. They have turned into prose poem memoirs, a new style for me, a real breakthrough. Previous STAR COULBROOKE was the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Logan City, Utah, and is founder/coordinator of the Helicon West Reading Series. Her poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory, Both Sides from the Middle , and City of Poetry. mappingliteraryutah.org/utah-writers/star-coulbrooke Next

Past Lives... That's Still a Thing, Right? by J. Diego Frey In my most recent past life, I was almost exactly the same I am now (same job same body shape and fear of spiders same wrinkled cotton wardrobe) except that my hair was curly my name was Margery and my beard was longer. Oh, and I had tentacles where my ears are now. Personal-sized octopus arms, about the thickness of a Marks-a-Lot brand magic marker and long enough to hold in front of my face a cob of buttered corn, which I would eat using the same chewing motions that I do now. In the life before that, prior to the great gene wars of the 2050s, I was shorter, and chubbier, hairier in all the wrong places. And I sold pet insurance to the nervous widows of Omaha. There must be some record of the life that proceeded that but the ether is murky. I was a sort of famous vaudeville act a few lives prior to that. On stage, animal noises would resonate through my enormous, hairy proboscis. In make-up, I had the head of a donkey. My showbiz-name was J. Donkey Frell. A big nose and a fey artistic tendency described my person through an extended series of lives during a dozen generations preceding this, always one of many similar, short, hairy men, weak of will and chin falling always to the sad symphonies of war or at least the singing telegram of venereal disease. Little known fact: Chlamydia…got its name from a character in an unpopular satiric opera I wrote in Vienna in the 1800s. Mostly, though, the spirits describe me as just a surfer of the lower to middle layers of society in a succession of Balkan territories. Notably, once, in the 17th century, I was, due to a clerical error, the Pope for three weeks. Remarkable—my eyeglasses prescription has been almost the same in every life. I don’t want to brag but the gypsy told me that a few thousand years ago, I was a red show pony named Fernutis— rumored to be quite handsome. The gypsy rules our lives. She twists the fabric of time and reality into dental floss. Do not forget to tip the gypsy. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This is a newer poem by me—first draft written maybe 3 years ago. It’s a much longer poem than the previous example. I’ve always felt more comfortable with the short poems, always worrying about overstaying my welcome. But lately I’ve been trying to stretch things out a bit. Mark Doty talks about pushing yourself past the end of your draft to discover where the poem is going to go after your current last line, and it turns out that can be a fun exercise. Mostly I hope that I am keeping the energy all the way through this poem. It starts out with a nice juicy image, so most of my revisions have been along the lines of enriching the subsequent imagery (hmmm…just noticed how close the word imagery is to the name Margery…). Thanks for sticking with the poem over all 23 stanzas! I hope this poem will be an anchor for my new, yet-to-find-an-interested-publisher collection, Froot Loop Moon . .................................................................................................................................................................................... J. DIEGO FREY is a poet living in the Denver area, which is where he grew up and never completely escaped. He published two quite likable collections of poetry, Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked with Colorado publisher Conundrum Press. jdiego.com Next - Interstellar by David Romtvedt Next

Teddy Thompson Croons Leonard Cohen by Natalie Padilla Young tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine It’s not even a love song, it’s the last drop of milk on dry cereal: the I that knows small windows, bare walls, a finale of soft naked lady: a sighing stripped, a woman. (Remember that first side sway, first spinning hug with someone of possibility? A lot of sweaty skins ago.) Not just ooh-la-la slow stuff, also others with beats, a call to feet, to hips, to who must swing, must knock the head back in time—not century time, music time—4:4, two-step, whatever. (Try not to remember. You still feel a grapefruit clenched in your chest.) Maybe it’s a full room in coordinated sigh. I know from your eyes, and I know from your smile An exhale in, out of that mouth. Maybe things will work, maybe just fine. (A lot of things conjure craving, but he’s only a man, a man too thin singing sweetly.) At the end, there is plenty and not enough to be so brave and so free In this place without explanation, put Teddy on repeat. Teddy repeats Leonard and someone hums along for a while Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue I must admit I have no clarity with this one—is it the poem or the song that I’m attached to? I wrote this when I heard Teddy Thompson cover Leonard Cohen’s “Tonight Will Be Fine,” initially thinking the lyrics were “tonight we’ll be fine.” I sent this little guy out quite a few times and then benched it for years, until a few months ago when I decided to revive and revise. Maybe go listen to Teddy sing Leonard and see what you think. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NATALIE PADILLA YOUNG co-founded and manages Sugar House Review . Author of All of This Was Once Under Water (Quarter Press, 2023). natalieyoungarts.com Next - The Worrier by Nancy Takacs Next

Bruce by J. Diego Frey Cattlecar, chicken car, people car caboose. I like red wine. You like red wine. We drink beer with Bruce. Storage building, office building, luggage rack museum. I have no time. You have no time. Bruce is on per diem. Elementary, tertiary, seventh manifold. I'm remorseful. You're remorseful. Bruce keeps us on hold. Doppelganger, pterodactyl, ectoplasm scones. I'll distract him. You vivisect him. Let the desert bleach his bones. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem appears in my first collection, Umbrellas or Else (Conundrum Press, 2014). Among other reasons why I am fond of it, it is the oldest poem in the collection, having been written two decades earlier on a train rolling through Nevada. I like to tell myself that I can hear the sound of the train in the lines. Another thing that I enjoy about it: the rhymes and playfulness. It feels very much influenced by one of my primary literary influences: Dr. Seuss. I also feel like I’m being a little bit Robert Frost-y with the tiny meter break in the second to last line. (I admit to some self-aggrandizing here.) Overall, a poem that I still enjoy reciting in public. A little tip: rhyming poems are easier to remember for later recitation. .................................................................................................................................................................................... J. DIEGO FREY is a poet living in the Denver area, which is where he grew up and never completely escaped. He published two quite likable collections of poetry, Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked with Colorado publisher Conundrum Press. jdiego.com Next - Past Lives.....That's Still a Thing, Right? by J. Diego Frey Next

A Cat Place Bobcats aren’t very big; they just sound that way, filling the night with caterwauling so hideous they are uncommonly assumed to weigh as much as large dogs …There is even a recorded case of an 11-pound bobcat kitten killing a mature doe of about 100 pounds. —Audubon, Nov-Dec 1999 by Star Coulbrooke In Big Hollow they say mountain lions used to bed down on the streamside under cottonwoods, wait for deer to come and drink. One pounce up from watercress and dark grass, the next day nothing, no trace of deer bones or guts, not even blood left there in the soft black soil. At twelve my sister walked the canal every day above the hollows, stopped along the way to look for caterpillars on milkweed, snakes in the shade of chokecherries lining the sunny hillside. One afternoon a shriek tore her from reverie, a screaming and thrashing like ten mountain lions. She focused her eyes across the canal to see in Cedar Hollow a bobcat trapped in steel jaws set by our cousins that morning. You can’t forget that sound, she says. Nothing gets beyond such pain. Years later it returns unbidden, just as everything you read from then on about wild cats will bring back that sound, that scene, that place. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue My younger sister started wandering the hills and canyons of our family farm in Idaho long before she started first grade. Her love for all the wild and tame animals there has inspired lots of poems. The poem has special meaning for me because it blends my sister’s love of nature with my love of reading nature magazines. I like the way the poem contemplates the danger and the science and the girl’s story that affects her (and her sister) decades later. .................................................................................................................................................................................... STAR COULBROOKE was the inaugural poet laureate of Logan City, Utah, and co-founder of the Helicon West Reading Series. Her most recent poetry collections are Thin Spines of Memory , Both Sides from the Middle and City of Poetry from Helicon West Press. Next - Walking the Bear by Star Coulbrooke 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

You Oughta Know by Brock Dethier Addiction fools the best of us: you smell the bait, acknowledge the hook, sniff it, flick it, tongue the steel point, but can’t guess how sharp the barb, how stealth its set. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue A short poem with a hook. I like to have a single metaphor carry the poem’s meanings, and I like to write poems that might affect readers’ lives. I targeted the arrogance of young people who think they are too smart and aware to get addicted. I’m proud to say that the teenage daughter I wrote the poem for is now almost 30 and almost completely clean and sober... though I’m sure the bad examples around her influenced her more than my poem. Sugar House Review published this poem and reprinted it on a promotional card. .................................................................................................................................................................................... Next - The Black Flies of Home by Brock Dethier Next BROCK DETHIER retired from Utah State University after directing the writing composition program for 11 years. His publications include From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music (Heinemann, 2003), First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers (Utah State University Press, 2005), Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them (Utah State University Press, 2013), and two books of poetry, Ancestor Worship (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015).

Andrea Hollander < Back to Breakthroughs Issue IT'S OKAY Andrea Hollander 00:00 / 02:20 IT'S OKAY Andrea Hollander In so many films, a family gathers around the bed of the one near death, hoping the far-off son will get there in time. The family doctor stands at the foot in his three-piece suit. If the film takes place early in the last century, maybe a new, black Ford pulls up in the gravel drive. We in the theater, buckets of popcorn in our laps, hear the crunch of its tires. Such a scene I never privileged firsthand, my 51-year-old mother having died alone just after dawn in that pale green room on the third floor of the hospital, where I drove every day to be with her those last weeks. I want to imagine a flurry of birdsong that morning, a family of starlings or finches in the huge cottonwood near the entrance to the hospital, where I would stop briefly beneath its wide canopy of shade. Fifty years later, I wonder if that tree is still there. It could be, couldn’t it? I know the offspring of starlings and finches return to the same tree generation after generation to birth their young. Couldn’t they—like a scene in a movie— have been singing that morning just as the sun came up? And couldn’t my mother have heard in their song the voices of us humans —her humans—as though my father, brother, and I had drawn ourselves around her bed, urging her, "It’s okay, you can let go now, it’s okay." This relatively new, unpublished poem addresses the deep sadness I've felt since my mother's death at 51 in 1970. While I've written about her numerous times since then, none of my previous poems addresses this particular irrepressible image of my mother alone at the very end of her life. For me, the breakthrough to the creation of "It's Okay" came when I was at home watching an all-too-familiar scene in a British film. I actually paused the film, pulled out my notebook and penned the poem's first draft. 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 Endowment for the Arts. www.andreahollander.net Next

The Gospel of Overconsumption by Scott Abbott Saturday, August 26, 2023 The Salt Lake City Public Library auditorium is packed to overflowing this morning. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson has invited the public to a conversation about Terry Tempest Williams’ essay, “I Am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake,” published in The New York Times . We greet the discussants with warm applause as they step onto the stage: Mayor Wilson, Terry Tempest Williams, and my son Ben Abbott. Mayor Wilson describes the Sunday morning she found Terry’s essay in the Times . “My husband and I had a brunch date with friends. It’s going to have to wait, I told him. You can’t imagine what I’m reading.” She turns to Terry. “Would you tell us how your Times piece came about?” "The catalyst," Terry replies, “was the report published on January 4 of this year titled ‘Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse.’ Ben Abbott, BYU professor of ecology, was the lead author, with an impressive list of co-authors. Their scientific analysis was picked up in The Washington Post and other news outlets, including The New York Times. I know Great Salt Lake intimately; still, the report shocked me. I contacted Ben and asked if we could talk. A short visit lengthened to a four-hour conversation. Then a Times editor emailed me: Would I write something about the crisis? I sent her a 2000-word reply, confident she wouldn’t have time to read it. She read it. I began to write.” Terry unfurls the Sunday Review section of the Times , dated March 26, 2023. Accompanied by Fazal Sheikh’s beautiful, ominous photographs of the lake, the piece fills page after page. “Tell us more about the photographer,” Mayor Wilson requests. “Fazal Sheikh is a friend of mine, “Terry says. “We have worked on several environmental projects together, including one related to Bears Ears National Monument. I asked if he would contribute some recent photos of Great Salt Lake. He was hesitant. His work is collected in major museums of art, not really the stuff for newspapers. I reminded him that more people would see his work in this Times piece than would ever see it in person. Plus, I said, you really love Great Salt Lake; together we can do something for her. And so we did.” Terry raises a bundle of ten or twelve drafts of the essay, the work of the ensuing weeks. “The day the piece was to go to print,” Terry continues, “the editor sent me a final copy w ith my work stripped of feminine personal pronouns in reference to Great Salt Lake. They also took exception to my describing her as ‘my Mother Lake.’ This is not what we agreed, I told the editor. My body and the body of Great Salt Lake are one. You have separated us. Our style guide requires this, the editor replied. Then perhaps you should revise your style guide, I said. You understand that we’re going to press in a few hours! Not with my piece in this form. Give me a couple of minutes, the editor said. S he returned: we’ll do it your way.” In Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place , Terry’s cancer-assaulted mother and the lake and bird refuge overwhelmed by too much water are melded into a narrative drawing wisdom and solace from two mothers. The Times editor balked at the personification. That much-maligned trope, I think, can be revelatory. A couple of years ago, my friend of three decades, poet Alex Caldiero, visited volcanos in Italy and Sicily, seeking the physical presence of what he considered living beings. “I talked with fishermen at the docks overshadowed by Stromboli,” he told me. “Stromboli is our father, they said, powerful and strict. He tells us when to fish, where to fish, when the season begins and ends. If we follow the rules, everything is fine. When we don’t, there’s hell to pay. In Sicily, however, people describe Aetna as a nurturing mother who provides the best soil and lava rock for building. And when I asked about Vesuvius in Pompeii, people just laughed. He’s a monstrous, trickster uncle who can’t be trusted in any situation.” “Folklore,” Alex concluded, “gets to the souls of things.” Mayor Wilson turns to Ben. "Professor Abbott, tell us how your report came together?” When Ben is introduced as Professor Abbott, my mind spirals back to the moment I too was introduced as Professor Abbott on this very stage. It was October 7, 2005, the evening of Alex’s epic 50th Anniversary performance of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Sponsored by Ken Sanders Rare Books, the event packed the auditorium and filled overflow rooms with another 700 eager participants. The Will Lovell Quintet performed 50s-vintage jazz. Poets Ken Brewer, Andy Hoffmann, Sara Caldiero, Melissa Bond, Jean Howard, Sandy Anderson, and Paul Swenson sat in a semicircle behind the podium, as had poets Philip Lamantia, Mike McClure, Gary Snyder, and Phil Whalen at San Francisco’s 6 Gallery for the October 7, 1955 premiere of “Howl.” Lamantia later likened Ginsberg’s reading to “bringing two ends of an electrical wire together.” “Professor Scott Abbott,” Ken Sanders announced, “will give us a sense for that historical event.” I approached the podium, looked out over the audience, and protested: “Professor, my ass!” When Mayor Wilson refers to Ben as Professor, it makes sense, I tell myself. It’s a marker of Ben’s scientific credentials. But when I protested the moniker “professor” on this stage, the context was different. Ken Sanders’ brilliance doesn’t owe itself to a college degree. In fact, he once told our Utah Valley University students that he was a little nervous because the last time he had been in a classroom was in his junior year in high school when he and the principal agreed it would be in their shared best interests if Ken never returned to school. Alex sat in poet Norman Pritchard’s course at The New School but also cites his informal apprenticeship with sculptor Michael Lekakis as formative. At breakfast the morning after my friend and coauthor Žarko Radaković and I attended the premier of Peter Handke’s play Voyage by Dugout in Vienna’s Burgtheater, Handke asked what we thought of the play. I started to describe how skillfully I thought the play employed an actual experience the three of us had had in Višegrad during the civil wars that disintegrated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Doktor Scott , Handke broke in, Doktor Scott . . . always on the job! I am indeed a professor. I’m proud of that. But my nonacademic creative work is meaningful to me in its own way. Although she founded the graduate program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah, I don’t think of Terry as Professor Williams, but as Terry Tempest Williams, author. And beyond his scientific credentials, I know Ben as an extraordinary back-country skier, as a mountain biker excelling in hundredmile winter races outside Fairbanks, Alaska, as a gifted and soulful singer, as the profoundly generous father of four of my grandchildren, as the inquisitive young man who, carrying his pack into class during his unhoused second year at Utah State University, responded to his professor’s “that looks heavy!” with “not as heavy as what you are carrying.” Professor Doktor Ben Abbott responds to the Mayor’s request: “Our 2021 report on the Utah Lake ecosystem,” he says, “was a scientific critique of the attempt by ‘Lake Restoration Solutions’ to monetize Utah Lake by dredging and filling the lake with islands. In response, the developers filed a three-milliondollar defamation suit against me. Our science eventually won out and resulted in the demise of the real estate scheme.” Ben listed me as a co-author on the Utah Lake report—"Dr. Scott Abbott”—my contribution a thorough editing. "Dr." feels just right in that case. Identity is complicated. When the would-be island builders served Ben with a SLAPP suit, my co-author of Wild Rides and Wildflowers , Sam Rushforth and I congratulated him for the accomplishment. “Our environmental and academic activism has never attracted a SLAPP suit,” we lamented. “You have leapfrogged over us.” In 2016, Terry and Brooke Williams bid on two oil and gas leases offered by the BLM, planning to develop the leases only when “science supports a sustainable use of the oil and gas at an increased value given the costs of climate change to future generations.” The BLM rejected their bid, and the ensuing public response led to Terry leaving the University of Utah to accept a position as writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School where she offers a course on spirituality and Great Salt Lake. “For our next project,” Ben continues, “we decided to study Great Salt Lake, threatened, as it is, by drought and overconsumption of water. Contributors to the work included scientists and advocates from six universities, four nonprofits, and three working ecology professionals. Six BYU students contributed to the report, s did ten BYU faculty and staff members across five colleges. I don’t say that to brag about BYU, but to point out that universities in general are institutions structured to facilitate this kind of interdisciplinary problem solving. We wanted to post the report before the mid-January beginning of the state legislative session, so many of us spent Christmas break developing and refining the work. We concluded that excessive water use is destroying Great Salt Lake, that the lake is on track to disappear in five years, and that the consequences of losing the lake will be drastic. Our report, published on January 4th, called on the Governor and the legislature to take immediate action.” Bn pauses eand Terry breaks in: “Ben, your activism on our behalf is much appreciated, but the stress from your work is immense. You are so skinny! You’ve got to eat more steak.” “Thank you, Professor Abbott,” Mayor Wilson says with a big smile, “and thank you Terry Tempest Williams. We now invite questions from the audience.” Someone notes that alfalfa is the region’s biggest consumer of water. “What can be done to limit alfalfa growth?” “We all have family or friends whose livelihoods depend on growing alfalfa,” Ben says. “Any actions we make must take them into account.” He follows with a detailed description of possible solutions, including federal and state legislation that compensates farmers for losses and protects farmers who temporarily give up water rights. “All solutions to this problem,” he reminds us, “require trust. We must ensure financial, legal, and professional support for farmers during this transition.” Scott Carrier, sitting next to me, a wonderfully skilled narrator himself, whispers that Ben just ended his extended elaboration at exactly the same place he started. “How old is he?” “I’m not sure,” I answer. He looks at me askance. “How has this winter’s heavy snow affected the lake?” “I see the winter storms as acts of divine intervention,” Ben says, “a gift of time to remedy the situation ourselves. The only way to accomplish that will be to convert or shame promoters of the gospel of overconsumption.” "Divine intervention, my ass!" I whisper to Scott Carrier. "It's all good," he responds. I don't know anyone who can speak to scientists, legislators, and Mormons like Ben can. Whatever will spur people to action.” Another member of the audience says he heard Ben say in an interview that if we would only grow food for humans to eat and not food for animals that we then eat, that would solve the water problem. “I had a good response to the question,” Ben says, “but Terry just suggested that I needed to eat more steak. What can I say? My faith tradition,” he continues, “tells us that we should only eat meat when it is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, most of us don’t pay much attention to that.” In her Times piece, Terry also invokes her religious upbringing: Utah is my home. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints raised me to care about community in the fullness of Creation. We were taught through sacred texts, “The Pearl of Great Price,” among them: “For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth.” Great Salt Lake had a spirit before she had a body. Brine shrimp have a spirit. White pelicans and eared grebes have a spirit. They are loved by God as we are loved. Like Terry and Ben, I grew up in and developed an identity shaped by Mormon culture. One day, however, walking across the campus of Princeton University, a thought stopped me short: I don’t believe in God. That is still the case forty-some years later. Heavy snow through divine intervention? A lake with a spirit loved by God? What’s an atheist to do with this sort of thinking? Over the decades, I’ve learned to respect and to respond to Alex’s mysticism as metaphor. I don’t have to believe to find the ideas and images powerful. I’ll wear my atheism lightly in the presence of Ben and Terry, a man and a woman motivated and inspired by their own forms of belief. Spinoza’s Deus sive natura (“God or Nature”) and “Nature’s God” as enshrined in our Enlightenment-inspired Declaration of Independence will be my creeds. Mayor Wilson asks for final thoughts: “What can we do?” Terry and Ben both recommend that we press our federal and state legislators for concerted action. Ben lists specific legislative actions, recommends tiered water pricing, and asks that businesses, churches, and nonprofits work together in the service of Great Salt Lake. Terry ends the discussion by reading a passage from her Times essay: On the surface of the lake, small waves broke toward shore, creating salt lines, but beneath the water’s surface there appeared to be an undertow, an inner tide pulling water back toward the center. If Great Salt Lake is in retreat . . . She stops reading here, looks up, and repeats the word “retreat.” “ As a writer,” she says, “I know my own vocabulary. At this point something entered my mind that was not mine. I believe it was the lake, and what I heard her say was: ‘I am in retreat and it is not what you think.’” Terry returns to her text: If Great Salt Lake is in retreat, perhaps she is holding her breath, as do we who worry about her prognosis. To retreat, to withdraw momentarily to garner strength and perspective, can be a strategy. Retreat can be a conscious action: a period of time called for to pray and study quietly, to think carefully and regain one’s composure . . . to commit to a different way of being, to change one’s beliefs. How, I wonder as I leave the auditorium, does such committment arise? What can induce a change in beliefs? What might replace a gospel of overconsumption? At SITE Santa Fe this summer, art critic and historian Lucy Lippard co-curated a show titled Going with the Flow: Art, Action, and Western Waters. She argues that in times of crisis “artists can expose the social agendas that have formed the land.” Writers and scientists like Terry and Ben lead us toward re-forming our relationship to Great Salt Lake and its watershed. What form that takes will reveal who we are. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “The Gospel of Overconsumption” was commissioned by Torrey House Press for a book on Great Salt Lake meant for Utah legislators who have and will be considering ways to conserve the lake. When someone realized that it might not be just the righthing for that audience, I received a gracious rejection letter. I’m pleased it has found a home in THE NOMAD. .................................................................................................................................................................................... SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor of Integrated Studies, Philosophy, and Humanities at Utah Valley University. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger. (Common Consent Press, 2022). He has translated works by Nobel Prize Awardee Peter Handke and botanist Gregor Mendel. scottabbottauthor.com Next - Tiananmen Mother by Michael Wells Next

Writing to Delight You Let's go!

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

The Little Old Lady in the Woodstock T-Shirt by Robert Cooperman I spot her in the Safeway parking lot, at least 80 and hanging onto her shopping cart as if teetering with vertigo at a cliff’s edge, her cane resting on the cart’s handle. On her T-shirt, the Woodstock symbol: birds trilling on a guitar’s frets, Love and Peace in the grass-aromatic air, while her cart totters with the blind staggers to her Bug that she trembles open. “Can I help you, Ma’am?” I ask, as she struggles to lift her shopping bag as if a barbell, and drops the dead weight into the back seat. She stares at me, as if afraid I’ll hit her over the head for her purse she grips like a lifeline, which maybe it is: with all her money, I.D., and credit cards. She looks at me again, notes my beard, what’s left of my hair gathered in a ponytail, sees my Jerry Garcia T-shirt, and demands, Wanna score some righteous shit? If not, get the fuck outta my face. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This might be my favorite published poem, partly because I manage to bring in one of my favorite obsessions, the Grateful Dead, but even more because of her unexpected and totally irreverent and defiant reply, breaking our assumptions about what a frail old lady should be and what she should say. .................................................................................................................................................................................... ROBERT COOPERMAN "a Brooklyn boy, right down to a B.A. at Brooklyn College," moved to Denver in 1974 to study in the joint Literature-Creative Writing Program, and received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and 19th Century British Literature. He has taught English at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He lives in Denver with his wife Beth. His volume In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Pub. Co., 1999) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000. Next - Frozen January Mornings by Robert Cooperman Next