< Back to Breakthroughs Issue STILL LIFE WITH FLY Shawn Dallas Stradley Two concrete strips separated and edged by weeds run between red brick walls, past a corrugated steel garage door, bare lightbulb, crooked wood door, past the weed patch of leftover space at the end of the dead end. Why there's a garage door alongside the alley is a good question, no vehicle could make such a tight turn. Raised, the door provides ventilation, natural light. Closed, it secures. Inside, two dusty double-hung six- over-six divided light windows look out to morning glory, sow thistle, other brick walls, let in muted light, cast shadows. For consistency and night, a couple of flood lights on poles provide directed light, harsh and bare, or softened with a scrim. Tea cups, angel wings, fabric, rusty train shock springs, spoiled fruit, skulls––one human found in a basement among medical school training supplies, one cat found in the corner of the weed patch by the downspout, one beaver found by the river––old books, empty vodka, whiskey, wine bottles. Mason jars filled with marbles, fortunes, rocks, air, pennies, turpentine, thinner. Dolls' arms, radio tubes, bones––vertebrae, jaw, femurs from deer or cow––statues of saints, rosaries, forty-hour candles wrapped with prayers, used coffee filters, condom wrappers, a shopping cart, mannequin torso, the ball cap left by last Saturday night's trick, dead flowers. Stretched canvases lean against bare brick walls, too much accumulated amid the buzz of a single fly. The couch sags. Open beer flattens. There's not enough time to paint it all out, step back, take it all in. Turpentine rags stained crimson, violet, fern and blue, used to clean brushes, wipe up spills, unstain hands, litter the floor like jock-straps in a strip-club backroom––spontaneous, combustible. "Still Life with Fly" was published in Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art . The personal breakthrough in this poem was derived from the concept that the next thing always belongs. If that is true, then why not keep going, keep adding? So I did. I’ve always been fascinated with artists' studios, the mess, the clutter, the curiosities, all the bric-a-brac, the inspiration. To me, these spaces have always held an air of potential eroticism. It’s all so exciting? Based on my many studio visits over the years, I imagined and I wrote, and I brainstormed, and I kept writing, and adding. In this case, even the gradual increase in line length keeps building to the chaos, the clutter, the potential. After the additions though, there is always the work of revision, grammar, sentence construction, flow, enjambment. Are these tools helping to build, helping to hold together? In a "kitchen sink"-type poem, I believe they have to. Previous SHAWN DALLAS STRADLEY grew up in Utah and California. He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from BYU, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Shawn began writing poetry at age 16. His mystical fascination with the natural world weaves throughout his work, and mixes with the urban. Shawn became active in the Utah poetry scene in 1997 and published his first full-length poetry book in 2003: Beyond October (Black Rock Books). Shawn has worked with poets and artists to produce chapbooks and a collaborative catalog for the art exhibit, The 9 Muses . Two chapbooks of Shawn's poetry were published in 2025 by Moon in the Rye Press, Fragile House and a group collaboration, When Cupboards Open . His poetry has been published by City Weekly , Exit 7 , Panorama , The New Era , Nine One One , The Poeming Pigeon , and My Kitchen Table. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue HOW TO MAKE A BASKET Jan Mordenski for Henry Taylor Take a walk down Canal St. Buy one of those crispy horn-shaped buns from the lady at the corner bakery. Eat it as you watch the two boys dangling their lines off Salmon Weir Bridge. Sit inside St. Benedict’s. Watch the sputtering rows of vigil lights, the way the wax bends the air as it evaporates. Take delight in tangled things: your daughter’s coppery hair, the fading lines of your fingertips, the trail a swallowtail makes as she tastes the asters in the garden. You need not concentrate on strictly rural images. Park across from the power plant; follow the grimy path of one fat black pipe. Keep your eye on the red Trans Am as it volleys down Telegraph Rd. This is easy. Move on, now, to the more difficult preparations. Study openings, memorize the patterns of house windows, the shifting lulls in your conversations. Dwell on one vast vacant area: your own loss of hearing, your inability to understand, the memory of the palms of your mother’s hands. Then go into the field. Find something that grows, something long and aspiring that points to the sky, tries, in fact, to be part of it. Explain to it how it will be better this way. Take it in your hands, not reverently exactly, but with respect. And keep it wet. Remember that little thrush you saw this morning at the edge of the canal? Try to see her now: a disoriented worm in her beak, her claws, two tiny scythes, gripping the gentle mess of twigs and feathers and string into which she put her children. Hold all this as you begin the chosen pattern. "How to Make a Basket" was first published in BLACK RIVER REVIEW . At my father's suggestion, I had enrolled in a few classes in basket-making and that (like many crafts) provided time for reflection - on my homelife, teaching, writing. I came to realize how many separate aspects of life are actually interwoven . This poem celebrates that breakthrough, and one of my poet-mentors, the great Henry Taylor. Previous JAN MORDENSKI was born in Detroit, Michigan. She is the author of the chapbooks The Chosen Pattern (Quadra-Project, 1988) and Blue Prairie of Darkness (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2026 ). Her poem "Crochet" was published in Plainsong and in Ted Kooser's series, American Life in Poetry . poetryfoundation.org/poets/jan-mordenski Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE GARDEN YOU MADE Maureen Clark we planted our oak tree saplings on the same day our husbands raced their carts to the garden center check-out they grew even when we were no longer speaking and were still growing when we mended we always knew they would outlive us our little lives short by comparison to their ringed calendars I would not be surprised if they met on moonless nights to gossip about us our human foibles and I wonder if our oak tree sends messages of condolence to yours now that both of you are dead and the garden you made is gone In "The Garden You Made," the breakthrough I had was the ability to write in a more minimal style, leaving out much of the detail to get to the emotional truth of the poem. Previous MAUREEN CLARK is the author of the poetry collection This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024 ) and has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir, Falling into Bountiful: Confessions of a Since Once Upon a Time Mormon Girl , is forthcoming from Hypatia Press. maureenclark.art Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue WHEN HE HAD TO TRAVEL Carol Coven Grannick I remember how I’d pat the sheets— dark green—when he was gone, a rhythmic touch with gentle beats I remember how I’d pat the sheets read poems brimmed with love conceits and woke alone at dawn. I remember how I’d pat the sheets— dark green—when he was gone. “When He Had to Travel” is a poem that marks a breakthrough in my journey with the man I was dating. He travelled a lot for his work at that time, and this triolet marks the night I decided I wanted to marry him. I wrote it in the last year during his final illness, and read it to him. He loved it. Previous CAROL COVEN GRANNICK is an award-winning poet and children's author of Reeni's Turn (Fitzroy Books, 2020). carolcovengrannick.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue HARD TIMES Lev Raphael Fifty+ years ago, I was bullied in fifth grade, but not by other students: My teacher was the culprit, and she seemed to take special delight in tormenting me. Today I wonder if she knew I was gay decades before I did, given my obvious crush on our dazzling class president, and it revolted her. Thanks to the alphabet and our last names, I sat right across Michael who was tall and curly-haired, with blue eyes and brilliant white teeth. I was nothing like him. Sitting in the row furthest from the door, he seemed to always live in a penumbra of light from the giant windows piercing the nearby wall of our neo-Gothic elementary school. I longed to be his friend without being able to articulate that to myself or understand it could mean something vital about who I was. Mrs. Zir must have observed me fawn over him—when I could—like the time he dropped a pencil and I stooped faster than he did so I could grab the precious yellow cylinder and hand it to him, hungry for a smile. He was kind in an off-hand way. Mrs. Zir herself was scarier than Cruella de Vil though she lacked the sharp angles and swirling robes. Muscular and six feet tall with a large, oval, sneering face and thinning gray hair trapped in a forbidding bun, she loomed above us kids like an adamantine, implacable god. Zir's clothes were almost always some shade of gray that matched her hair and her derisive eyes. In a horror movie today, I think that CGI would be used to make her an alien storm cloud roiling with nauseating thunder and lightning, disguised now and then as a human being. This woman with the harsh last name stalked our classroom in big-ass sneakers you felt could crush you as easily as one of her savage, nonverbal put-downs. When she shook her head at your wrong answer to some question, that gesture said you were hopeless and she was disgusted. Mrs. Zir seemed to especially enjoy humiliating anyone who couldn't think fast when she swept up and down the five rows of six desks each, jamming a cruel index finger your way and demanding an instant answer to a multiplication problem. "Six times six! Five times seven!" It was a tsunami, and if you hesitated, she abandoned you to your ignorance and shame, turning instantly away to torture someone else. Just seeing her start this inquisition left me sweating and breathless because I was so anxious to begin with in her class. Arithmetic was like a black hole to me and written quizzes were my doom no matter how much I studied beforehand: hard-core proof of my inadequacy. The classroom with its scarred wooden desks--so old that they had inkwells--felt like a prison that whole year of fifth grade. Zir bullied me and anyone else whenever she got the chance. She was the queen and we were her lowly subjects, or most of us were. She had her favorites, the pretty girls and handsome boys (like Michael) whose parents apparently flattered her at parent/teacher conferences. Mrs. Zir knew that my parents had lived in Belgium, and when she said something to my mother in French at their first parent/teacher conference, my mother acted puzzled: "What language are you speaking? It's not familiar to me." That reply apparently left my teacher speechless. My mother relished this anecdote when she reported it to me at home because she thought Mrs. Zir was pretentious and a snob—on top of having an atrocious accent. As much as I enjoyed hearing an adult mock my teacher, I quailed inside when I heard what took place at the conference because I knew there would be revenge. It followed swiftly. In auditions for our class's production of The HMS Pinafore , I was cast as Ralph Rackstraw, the lowly seaman in love with the captain's daughter, but Mrs. Zir barely heard a note before silencing me: "You can't sing!" I was crushed. I could have been relegated to the chorus even if I wasn't a great singer, but instead, she gave me a prominent role and undermined it by keeping me mute onstage. Still, the cruelest thing she did was destroy my writing. I was an advanced reader and proud of my poems and little stories. I expected to take them all home when fifth grade was over to start a personal library, but Mrs. Zir wouldn't let me have mine. She said that she was keeping everyone's portfolios, and I was too scared to ask why or report her refusal to my parents. But when I finally steeled myself to venture one floor down to her classroom the next year when I was in sixth grade, she dismissed me with a casual "Oh, I threw all of that out." Decades after fifth grade, I am courageously taking voice lessons with a young graduate student in Michigan State University's College of Music and he couldn't be more different from the severe Mrs. Zir. Fair-haired Felix is relaxed, encouraging, witty, clear-headed, loves to laugh and can sometimes read my mind, as when he notes I might be overthinking a line in a song rather than feeling it. I had almost completely forgotten Mrs. Zir until the day Felix is talking about mental blocks interfering with the free production of sound and I find myself sharing Mrs. Zir's damning verdict that kept me silent. He shakes his head. "But you have a beautiful voice! There's so much music in you!" And I suddenly feel as liberated as if I've been under hypnosis and the magician has just snapped his fingers to bring me out of it. Sometimes opposites can inspire an essay or short story that I write, and that's the genesis of "Hard Times." I take voice lessons at a community music school connected to our local university, and it's staffed by faculty and graduate students from the College of Music. My most recent teacher has been ideal: inspiring, thorough, focused, friendly, and blessed with a great sense of humor. Those qualities have helped me improve my resonance, my legato, and my understanding of the poetry in each song that we work on, whether Schumann or Sondheim. One day during vocal warm-ups, his polar opposite, the worst teacher I ever had, just popped into my head. I hadn't thought about her in, well, what seemed like forever, but realized out of the blue that I was the one with power now because I could use the writer's magic to turn her into words. Previous LEV RAPHAEL is an editor, mentor, writing coach, and the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. writewithoutborders.com and levraphael.substack.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue COLD MARBLE, HOT MEMORIES Lev Raphael I was in love with museums before I even visited one. My parents had a small, battered, brown suitcase filled with art postcards from London, Paris, and all across Belgium, where they lived for five years after WWII. They never spoke much about surviving the Holocaust, and the hundreds of postcards seemed to fill that silence for me. Europe was art back then, not death and destruction, and I communed with those images as intently as someone deep in prayer. Sitting on the linoleum-covered floor in front of them, I could have been one of those guys in a science fiction movie opening a mysterious box whose unseen contents give off an unearthly and mesmerizing glow. My Washington Heights bedroom had an unobstructed view of the George Washington Bridge and watching its lights come on at dusk was one of my quiet joys, as soothing as poring over these photos of statues and paintings. But nothing prepared me for the revelations on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A fan of Ancient Greek history and Greek myths in elementary school, I was immediately drawn to the galleries of Greek and Roman statues. I already sensed I was different from my classmates and I was electrified by the bold nudity on one pedestal after another, bathed in tender natural light from above, or so it seemed, and lit up even more by their own perfection. With my parents off in some other gallery, I wandered and stared and studied—and who could accuse me of anything unwholesome or dangerous? I felt safe there, sheltered, wordlessly embraced. It was a much later piece, though, that changed my life: Canova's Perseus . At the time, this statue loomed on a landing at the top of a mammoth staircase, its placement making the space around it feel like an altar. Shy then, bookish, easily bullied, and living in the shadow of an older brother who seemed to get all the attention I craved, I relished the Perseus, would have gulped it down if it were a drink. Easily three times my size, Perseus was all graceful, cool triumph as he held Medusa's grotesque head away from himself. His strength, his beauty, and yes, his perfect nude body, filled me with longing not just to be him, but to create something, anything. I returned to him on each visit, engrossed, inspired, and many years later wrote a story in which he figures as an icon of gay desire. Every statue from the ancient world that I've encountered since that day, whether in the Santa Barbara Museum or Berlin's Pergamon Museum, reminds me of the discovery of such unparalleled beauty and the nascent discoveries of self that waited for me in my teens. I've even felt Perseus's power at London's Tate Modern Museum, wandering through an exhibition of Brancusi statues which couldn't have been more unlike Canova's work, but their beauty triggered vivid memories of his. And made me cry, which alarmed the nearest guard. I muttered something about being overwhelmed and wandered off, dazed but replete. Published in the Gay & Lesbian Review . I grew up in an immigrant family where money was tight but the love of art and music was the air I breathed. My parents took me to concerts and musicals from a very early age and we visited the major museums in Manhattan so often that I grew to have favorite pieces like Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art and "Rembrandt Contemplating a Bust of Homer" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were works that mesmerized me with their beauty, especially since I had no talent whatsoever myself as a visual artist. But I did have words and the words for the sculpture described here apparently lay dormant until early in the pandemic when in my relative isolation from friends, family and even neighbors, I found myself writing essay after essay as memories filled my days. I was never truly alone. And art was where it all began. Previous LEV RAPHAEL is an editor, mentor, writing coach and the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. writewithoutborders.com and levraphael.substack.com Next

Missa Brevis by Kimberly Johnson If I prayed harder. If I prayed in Latin, in its syntax a rosary chain of convolutions. If I learned all the old vocabularies of supplication. If strove in koine simplicity, if surpliced my pleas in the psalmist’s supple play. If I prayed harder. Prayed better. If I learned all the holy, ancient tongues of desperation. If I learned new ones. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This poem just never made it into any of my books. I wrote it in about 2006, when I was researching the circulation of scriptural texts before the period of formal canonization and noting the recurrence of certain figures of speech across language traditions. I like that this poem never reaches a conclusion about what might happen if it finds success, that it instead finds itself primarily focusing on the medium of the effort itself. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KIMBERLY JOHNSON is a poet, translator, and literary critic. Her work has appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Slate , The Iowa Review , PMLA , and Modern Philology . Recipient of grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Utah Arts Council, and the Mellon Foundation, Johnson holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Kimberly Johnson lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. kimberly-johnson.com Next - Foley Catheter by Kimberly Johnson Next

Flag (2024) by M. L. Liebler An American flag Rippling savagely In the late winter sun. The stripes waving On and on. A revolutionary Handshake with the cold wind. This flag’s fist is the future, Its shoulder turned Towards the past. What do I have In common with that? A piece of cloth? What Can I do for that Which it stands? I am as indifferent As I was as a young boy. My early years coming back On a raging northern wind. It was my Cub Scout Three finger salute To all the injustice, The racism, And the mean Spirit that blows As aloft as yesterday’s Symbol without a home. A man without a country. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem and the one that follows, though written almost 35 years apart, both highlight the distress I have had with America since Vietnam. Now, in the 21st century we enter another dark chapter in American history. Many Americans seem happy to vote for a man who has 90 felony charges, a rape conviction, stole Top Secret documents from the American government and bilked the country out of $400+ million dollars in unpaid taxes. Moreover, the Supreme Court has granted immunity for all crimes by presidents in and out of office. This means that all the soldiers who gave their lives for the freedom in the USA have done so for nothing. We now have a dictator and a king. This November was likely our last election, and we will see more of our rights and freedoms taken away by authoritarians disguised as a “Christians.” If this weren’t so tragic, it would seem unbelievable. It couldn’t happen here! Ultimately, my feelings reverted to how I felt as a pre-teen in America. I thought we had moved past this, but we are returning to the 1950s. Young people will have to fight the old culture and political wars again. I hope they have learned something from our past struggles. .................................................................................................................................................................................... M.L. LIEBLER is a Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer. His 15 books and chapbooks include Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press, 2008) which was awarded The Paterson Prize for Literary Excellence and The American Indie Book Award for 2009. A Wayne State University Distinguished Scholar, he directs The WSU Humanities Commons and The Detroit Writers' Guild. mlliebler.com Next - Decoration Day by M.L. Liebler Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue GOING SOUTH George Amabile for A and the others We’ve come down, here where the air is warm as blood – ten days in faux time, designed to heal a year of distress. But when toothpick and paper umbrellas in billowy glasses fail to console, we resort to the sea, where we, and everyone else, began. Underwater, stems are snake supple and the light is nuanced, gradual as it goes down, and down, toward green nights we’d never sleep through. This is where we may recover that moment, that lovely plunge of the heart, when we saw everything as a no thing, where emptiness gave radiance to the world. "Going South" describes a breakthrough in perception and feeling, an embrace of transience that results in a world of renewed radiance. Previous GEORGE AMABILE has published 13 books, including Seeing Things (Signature Editions, 2025) . His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, and Canadian Literature . Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue INCUNABULA, MOTHER TONGUE Max McDonough My mother—blogger, doll addict cyber queen, sniper at the eBay auction computer screen— mixed her idioms. From the get-go , for example, became From the gecko when she said it. Not the sharpest bowling ball in the shed. He side-blinded me. Shithead thinks he’s cool as mustard. Thinks he’s right up my sleeve. I escaped from New Jersey for college, which opened up a whole nother can of germs. In emails I wrote: Professor, I’ll have to mow it over a little longer. Professor, without a question of a doubt. I didn’t realize I made switches too until I re-read them—a nervous, first-gen scholarship student— as I’m sure my mother didn’t think she’d altered anything in her life. But that’s a different chiasmus for a different line of thought, not for nights like this one, alone and happy mostly, my heart at the peck and call , though, of those suburban woods of my childhood again— the ultraviolet yellow feathers of witch-hazel thicket, serrated huckleberry leaves—the understory so dense, tangled to itself, that walking a straight line becomes a tight circle, and my mother’s voice is mine. "Incunabula, Mother Tongue" was first published in Best New Poets . I’d been writing poems about a difficult estrangement from my mother only to realize that half the reason I love language – love to bend and break and rearrange it – was an inheritance. Suddenly grief had a meaning. Maybe even, can I say this?, it glittered. Previous MAX MCDONOUGH'S debut poetry collection, Python with a Dog Inside It, won the 2023 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His work has appeared in The New York Times , AGNI , Best New Poets , The Adroit Journal , T Magazine , and elsewhere. maxmcdonough.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue HOW TO TURN A HATE MARCH INTO A JUBILEE PROCESSION Dana Henry Martin after George Sherwood Hunter Remove torches. Add paper lanterns. Remove logo T-shirts and jeans. Add white Victorian dresses. Add leather shoes with buttons and tucked heels. Add bonnets and bonnets and more bonnets. Remove pavers, grass, black sky. Add cobble. Add a single-mast ship with no sail in the distance, other ships farther, their masts crisscrossed like toothpicks. Add water that looks painted and crackled. Add celadon sky that can’t be teased from water nor water teased from it. Remove screams and teeth and tonsils exposed to air. Add children and four men, one in a costume, one leaning over a railing, one in a floppy hat, one holding a basket full of sticks. Remove stiff arms raised in Sieg Heil salutes. Add gloved hands that clutch lantern poles, free arms hanging or perched like birds on a hip. Remove city. Add village. Remove hate masked as march. Add jubilee parading as jubilee. Remove anger looking for anchor. Add far-reaching gaze like a woman looking out over the wheat she’s grown in a place where nothing should grow. Add soft glow on cheeks. Add pointed toes. "How to Turn a Hate March into a Jubilee Procession" was first published in Sheila-Na-Gig. The question at the heart of this poem is how do we break through the vitriol many feel today and the hate speech and hate symbols associated with that vitriol? I saw Sherwood Hunter's Jubilee Procession in a Cornish Village, June 1897 one morning on social media. I was struck by the way elements of it both paralleled and stood in stark contrast to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The breakthrough for me was being able to transmute the march into a jubilee. Previous DANA HENRY MARTIN is a poet, medical writer, and health- and mental-health advocate whose chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, 2025), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, 2012), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009). Martin's work has appeared in The Adroit Journal , Barrow Street , Cider Press Review , FRiGG , Laurel Review , Mad in America , Meat for Tea , Muzzle , New Letters , Rogue Agent , Sheila-Na-Gig , SWWIM , Trampoline , and other literary journals. She weaves, birds, and hangs out with the cows who live next to the cemetery in Toquerville, Utah. danahenrymartin.com Next

Stacy Julin < Back to Breakthroughs Issue LAST MEAL Stacy Julin 00:00 / 00:32 LAST MEAL Stacy Julin That last meal as a family was difficult. He struggled to swallow the food down between sobs. The kids were quiet. He said it was the best meal he had ever eaten, but it was over for me. Twenty years of sadness and cheating. I admit my heart ached for him, but after he left, nothing would stop me now from locking that door. This poem was written at a very hard time in my life. Now, when I look back on it, I'm really proud of myself. I taught my children something very important. No one deserves to be treated badly, and you are strong enough to leave. Previous STACY JULIN'S work has been published in Oyster River Pages , Pirene’s Fountain , Sweet Tree Review , Southern Quill , and Word Fountain , and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, A Pebble Thrown in Water (Tiger’s Eye Press, 2010), Visiting Ghosts and Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Things We Carry (Finishing Line Press, 2024). She lives with her family at the base of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. facebook.com/Stacydixonsplace/ Next