Jamison Conforto < Back to Breakthroughs Issue BOY Jamison Conforto 00:00 / 01:26 BOY Jamison Conforto When I was a boy it was just the two of us under that hot Utah summer sun, blazing high the smell of rain and warm rabbitbrush heaven a synonym for him, for afternoon And when I was a boy clinging to the fence watching my best friend run away in real time smaller and smaller through the wheat until I couldn't pick him out from the horizon And when I was a boy crying in my bed wishing with all my heart that I had gone with him disappeared together into the wheat instead of picking the coward's way of things I'm no longer a boy crying for the dead but I still think of what could have been if I had traveled through that rabbitbrush if we had run away together when we had time "boy" is a true story from my youth, when I watched my best friend run away. That day has been a landmark event in my past and a keystone of my inspiration for as long as I can remember, so to finally be able to put it into words is a breakthrough for me personally. I like to think the layers of resonance between the stanzas is a breakthrough in the development of my poetic technique as well. Previous JAMISON CONFORTO is a writer from the Salt Lake Valley. You can follow his poem-a-day journey at @the_year_365_in_365 on Instagram. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue REAL ESTATE Marjorie Maddox At 92, my mother was the house I forgot I once lived in. With her bad hips, curved spine, and one missing breast, she’d still power-wash dirt off her beige, still accessorize with seasonal décor— poinsettia scarves and earrings, pastels for spring, no white after Labor Day. She’d still shuffle to the mirror to touch up the exterior with red lipstick, then welcome me home to the home that was her home away from home where living was assisted. When she pursed her lips in the Community Room in this old but beautiful house of hers where the bones of her foundation creaked, she didn’t see how her right shoulder, lower than the left, jutted just so toward the one eligible bachelor of 95 in the paisley-decorated room where she refused to fall apart or age, flirting all the way through supper— beef stew, fried chicken, or fish fillet served each evening at 5:00 pm sharp in the cozy dining room wallpapered with cottages of Cape Cod. Once, when we called her room, she wasn’t there. Once when we called after dinner, she wasn’t there. Once, or maybe more than once, this proper structure of a woman, circa 1929, retired to the bedroom on a “date” with an older man, both politely glued to Jimmy Stewart on a wide-screen TV larger than any she’d ever owned in the suburban home she owned with my father. My mother, too prim to breastfeed; who weathered two husbands (heart attack and Alzheimer’s); my mother who went back to work at forty and won awards selling real estate, top in her office; my mother whose baby body was a house abandoned by an architect and his lover, and then again by the new owner. This mother of mine, this house in which I’d lived, then lived outside of for sixty-two years, now clean and tidy, now emptied out, now for sale, now nobody’s home. It’s been almost five years since my mother’s death. Before her passing, I penned the collection, Seeing Things (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025) intricately exploring what it meant to be the daughter of a mother with dementia. As my mother’s memories floated away, my grief came slow and steady, so much so that after she died, it seemed there were no more grief poems to write. That changed this week. Unexpectantly, when I responded to a prompt on “houses,” fresh grief broke through. Today, I give you “Real Estate,” a poem that has now given me permission to write more poems on loss. Previous MARJORIE MADDOX has published 17 collections of poetry, a story collection, five children’s and YA books, and two anthologies (co-editor). She is a Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven Campus of Commonwealth University. marjoriemaddox.com Next

Interstellar by David Romtvedt When I was a kid I wanted the aliens to land, open the door of their ship and appear, halo of light around their heads, seven-fingered hands in silver gloves waving me on board while speaking some unknown language like French. The years have passed and the ship hasn’t come. I lean out the door and sniff the air, cock my ear listening for the UPS truck in the distance, back ordered package on its way. When the truck stops, I lift my front paws onto the steel step and leap up. The driver leans down biscuit in hand. From the open doorway, I call out, Ne t’inquiètes pas— je t’enverrais une postale , surprising everyone with my knowledge of French. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem speaks to the interpenetration of experience and imagination. As a child in a rather unhappy home, I dreamt of flying away with the aliens. Indeed, my wife has said she hopes the aliens never land as she’s certain I’ll get on board. Then there’s my dog who will climb up into any UPS truck he sees. Finally, there’s the dog I’ve not yet met who not only speaks French, but appears to write it, promising to send me a postcard, me promising to send you one. Currently unpublished, “Interstellar” is the opening poem in Still on Earth to be published by the Louisiana State University Press. .................................................................................................................................................................................... DAVID ROMTVEDT'S latest book of poetry is No Way: An American Tao Te Ching (LSU Press, 2021). He was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in southern Arizona. He graduated from Reed College, with a BA in American Studies and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a graduate fellow in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. After serving in the Peace Corps in Zaïre (currently Congo) and Rwanda and on a sister city construction project in Jalapa, Nicaragua, he worked as the folk arts program manager for the Centrum Foundation. He has worked as a carpenter, tree planter, truck driver, bookstore clerk, assembly line operative, letter carrier, blueberry picker, ranch hand, and college professor. A recipient of two NEA fellowships, The Pushcart Prize , and the Wyoming Governor's Arts Award, Romtvedt served as the poet laureate of the state of Wyoming from 2003 to 2011. davidromtvedt.com Next - Sunday Morning Early by David Romtvedt Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THIS HORSE IS THE BOSS OF ME Mike Wilson An opening in the ground in my chest opens a box that opens another world bigger clear, silver, and empty like Montana. # Steel spurs on my boots are for show: the barest motion sends the horse galloping through frictionless pixelation intimate as my retina. This mind-blind land is beyond my ken. I trust the horse to carry me where I should go. "This Horse is the Boss of Me" describes breaking through to the other side, as Jim Morrison put it, where desire carries us through a land we normally cannot see. Previous MIKE WILSON 'S work has appeared in many magazines and in his poetry collections, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020) and Before the Fall (Kelsay Books, 2026) , as well as a debut novel, Food Court , forthcoming in 2026. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky. mikewilsonwriter.com Next

Knotted Wrack by Maureen Clark I can see now that it was a winter for travel although I never left the house in Bountiful and the cat rarely traveled far from the southern windowsill I traveled to the edge of belief my religion like seaweed tangled around my ankles pleading to some God: help me traverse this trouble the loss of the religion I traveled with my whole life I am searching for the right word to describe this battle with my old self those unpredictable words that I see out there beyond my small life I want to travel to those exotic places where I might find the woman I believe I really am the woman I want to be authentic and unrepentant as thunder and lava the woman just out of my reach the object of all my inner battles I have been defined: weaker sex helpmeet the kept woman goodwife better half one of nature’s agreeable blunders the woman behind the man sister second-class citizen, I live in the heart of Bountiful where my story is full of women ruled by religion women sacrificed to religion for man’s love of God more than woman the tangled sacred sense of God turns out to be the Devil’s shoelace seaweed in thin filaments that trip the logic beached lumps of seaweed the smell of salt a time of wrack and loss and women cast up cast out scapegoats I want a word to describe this kind of wordlessness I am labeled by this language so many words none of them written by women I am not a consolation prize a word that can be underlined pinned down I am the word dangerous the word wild I can only travel in one direction I’ll be a scalpel cutting out the words that insist I take someone else’s word for it not my own here in Bountiful I will weave an elaborately and bountiful life of shells and string and the words I’m not supposed to think question I can’t ask caught in this seaweed my whole life a sweet tangle of weeds separating the self from the saint/sorceress/sinner/seaweed the colors of the ocean I drown in I collect words for kelp: knotted wrack sea whistle gulfweed the cottage industry of green bottle seaweed the metaphor for a woman’s hair what is acceptable what is not chenille seaweed black tang lady wrack carrageen mermaid’s fan I will find a way to travel away from my past unknotting myself travel to an ocean big enough for Saturn to float surrounded by seaweed I will find answers there that I can’t find in Bountiful where I drown in the unappreciated bounty of identical houses a cherry tree in each yard bountiful place in the desert of roses near the Great Salt Lake where no seaweed beaches just crusted salt oolitic sand the bounty of silence of being silenced how ironic that Bountiful is the place where I lose my religion where it’s not just a word for abundance where I am finally full of loss enough to let go and accept the bountiful imperfection of myself this is where I live just a woman who is naming herself one letter at a time a woman who lives in a kind of poverty so rich I can be full of questions my feet bare I carry a jar of ointment I am a traveler looking for answers I will choose what I need to take with me I travel towards my own definition the one I choose I travel alone into this bountiful place to become a woman who gathers words and stones shells and seaweed a woman who hoards her verbs Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I wrote this poem about fifteen years ago. I was reading the poem “Lennox Hill” by Agha Shahid Ali from his book Rooms Are Never Finished (W.W. Norton, 2001) and the repetition of the Canzone was mesmerizing. This was a poem that took a long time to compose. Any kind of poetic form needs to work without drawing attention to its rhymes and repetitions. The Canzone felt like the perfect form for the project of trying to explain the journey o f a woman leaving the religion she has always belonged to and arriving at a place where she could define herself. The repetition was a good tool for this often-circuitous journey. [Editor’s Note: “Knotted Wrack” has since been published inThis Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024), and was nominated for The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Small Presses .] .................................................................................................................................................................................... MAUREEN CLARK retired from the University of Utah where she taught writing for 20 years. She was the director of the University Writing Center from 2010-2014, and president of Writers@Work from 1999-2001. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review , Alaska Review , The Southeast Review , and Gettysburg Review among others. Her first book is This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024). Next - Acrostic Lifeboat by Maureen Clark Next

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

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

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

Ignatius by Karin Anderson My God. Maybe I’ve had enough. Let me go home to my own descendants. Maybe my grandmother was right: why dwell on such tragic tales? You’re in too deep. Sudden withdrawal will harm you, distorting all that you dream. What, like meth? I do not understand your meaning. I do not understand my meaning, either. How do I return? Return is eternal. There is nothing but return. I’m not yet ready to believe that’s true. Derrida says the real future is the one we have never seen. I take that to mean our children may still have a few surprising options. Who the f--- is Derrida? Never mind. Send me one last guide. Someone to help me find my mother’s lost people. Please. I want to bring them to her while I can. So many early deaths—no one to preserve the stories. Her mother’s whole family vanished, so young, so many consecutive generations. So many well-meaning replacements insisting on their erasure. How can you tell a four year-old to quit crying for the sudden disappearance of all she understands? She sure did learn to stop the tears. Taught us to do the same. Do we even exist—did we ever exist—if the stories, even the imperfect ones, even the fragments, dissipate with the tellers? My leg hurts. Mine too. So I want a guide on this one. Rational, undramatic, sympathetic. Like my mother. Woman, all you have to guide you through this last mystery is the internet. You’ve run the well of revelation dry. I’m very old, and I’m tired. You purport to be a scholar, do you not? Find her people within the Babel of that lighted box. They do trace themselves in her; you will recognize them as they speak unto your mind. Give me a head start. How far back before we find something familiar? An origin—not just a genealogy? Not so far, in my reckoning. A long time in yours. Begin in Providence, say, 1800. They are, already, five generations made by this perplexing and violent New World. You will be among fellow Americans. Okay. Two brothers, Silas and Festus Sprague, seven years apart. Twin sisters, Barbara Ann and Millicent Lindenberger. The brothers are first cousins to the sisters. Now a multi-family removal to the Ohio frontier. A ricochet of marriages and a sensible family’s capitulation to a story of American angels. A trek to a landscape alien as a moon. My mother wants me to disentangle an administrative forgetting: “The record says that Barbara Ann is married to either Silas Sprague, or Festus Sprague. Which is it? We need to get it right.” Her urgency is different from mine: she wants to put those old lives in order. She wants to send correct information to Salt Lake City, so the Mormon Church can make the long-ago union eternally official. I wish to deconstruct. But we’re both leaning over the same diorama. So I’ll do the homework, and then I’ll walk her in. I will be my mother’s guide. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue As an ‘apostate,’ I work to redeem idiosyncratic meanings from my Latter-Day Saint and Lutheran heritage. Before Us Like a Land of Dreams (Torrey House Press, 2019) portrays peculiar impacts of ancestry; I “resurrect” genealogical figures by inventing a relationship with the medieval Catholic Saint Ignatius, who taught his followers to meditate on a scriptural story so intensely that they could enter it and converse with its characters. This passage appears late in the book’s sequence, as Ignatius loses patience with his cynical acolyte. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KARIN ANDERSON I s the author of the novels Before Us Like a Land of Dreams , What Falls Away , and Things I Didn’t Do (forthcoming in 2025), published by Torrey House Press. She hails from the Great Basin. karinandersonauthor.com Next - Knotted Wrack by Maureen Clark Next

Barbara Huntington < Back to Breakthroughs Issue SHIFT Barbara Huntington 00:00 / 00:41 SHIFT Barbara Huntington Sit on meditation bench something happens, doesn’t mind falls into abyss No words, no images bow to towering stone Buddha sit on meditation bench Above me the Buddha sits serene below the Buddha I bow something happens, doesn’t I am the one who bows to the stone Buddha I am the statue that crumbles as it bows to me mind falls into abyss I wrote "Shift" on a day when I was at a five-day silent Buddhist retreat in the desert in Joshua Tree, California, just sitting and meditating when I found myself both on the meditation bench facing the Buddha statue, and also as the Buddha statue facing me. I wrote it as a way to remember the time I felt my consciousness shift. Previous BARBARA HUNTINGTON was born in Albuquerque, NM and recently retired as Director of the Preprofessional Advising Office at San Diego State University. She has written poetry, children's books, memoir, and a handbook about how to get into the school of your choice, and her students who overcame tremendous odds to become wonderful healers as physicians, pharmacists, dentists, veterinarians, physician assistants, optometrists, chiropractors, and naturopathic doctors. barbarahuntington.com Next

11/8/16 by Joe Sacksteder God called to our fathers, Take your children, the ones whom you love, and offer them as burnt sacrifices. We walked with our fathers to the mountain, performed the chores they set us —fetched wood, built an altar— though we’d guessed the reason for our fathers’ silence before we caught the glint of silver. God campaigning elsewhere, his messenger called out, Do not reach your hand against your children, for I know now that you fear God. Hearing wrong, fearing wrong —or just angry at the wasted day— our fathers killed us anyway. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Soon after the 2016 election, my PhD exam reading list sent me to the Rare Books Department at the University of Utah's Marriott Library to leaf white-gloved through the Book of Genesis. My mentor Melanie Rae Thon had suggested it, the Robert Alter translation. I'd held the Bible in great esteem as a young person but was feeling at a low point of charity toward a text that so many voting Americans were warping and being warped by. This poem, always a grim favorite of mine, popped into my head fully formed, a kind of revenge. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JOE SACKSTEDER is the author of the short story collection Make/Shift (Sarabande Books), the novel Driftless Quintet (Schaffner Press), and an album of audio collages Fugitive Traces (Punctum Books). His experimental horror novel, Hack House, is forthcoming from Astrophil Press. joesacksteder.com Next - Tuesday Night Bieber by Joe Sacksteder Next

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