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

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

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

The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Across the river, trotting, the fox. Who pauses to test the river’s rotten ice with ginger step. Will she trust it this late in the year? She draws back her paw, licks. Appraises the river’s dangerous skin. Looks at me as if to say what purpose, these stories, that make fable of my life? None, I say, but the sheen of dream and magic they lend to our lives. She cocks her head, considering. Squats to piss. She is just an animal, marking with scent. She scratches at her haunch, stands to shake herself, is gone. I’m left alone on the human side, in this territory demarcated by words. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This unpublished poem was inspired by stories of fox wives, animals who transform into humans. This is the final poem of a series that didn’t quite materialize. The poem reflects the longing I felt as I wrote: I wanted transformation too, but to escape words and human constructions. This poem points to the impossibility of that and returns from myth to the real world of the fox. It’s also my only poem written in form. .................................................................................................................................................................................... LISA CHAVEZ is a poet and memoirist from Alaska now living in the mountains of New Mexico with a pack of Japanese dogs. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico and is the author of In An Angry Season (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Destruction Bay (West End Press, 1998). Next - A Cat Place by Star Coulbrooke Next

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

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

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

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