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

The Organization of Bones by Joel Long Let’s rearrange the bones by size while the goat looks on. Let’s line them up to cardinal points so shadow tells the time. The double doors may open for me to look over your brown shoulder, your dark hair that covers your skull where the rivers are falling and the trees are green with birds. Start with the bones of the ear, small sand, then move to the tarsals, these glyphs made for waving the hand, the hinge in the dark circuit of the blood, but here they are soldiers at May Day, such precision, such a proud song. The goat begins to hum and nibbles the threshold, fur bristling like vellum before the monk takes out the blade. The warmth of your body is so quaint against the arrangement you’ve made, a relic of what you are, the past so filled with warm bodies and singing goats, a thousand setting suns indifferent to the coming night. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I was moved by Salgado's photo, Children Playing with Animal Bones, Brazil, 1983 , the three children in their own bodies rearranging the bones into symmetrical lines, making sense of the bones in some way. Of course, the light in the photograph is beautiful in its arrangement as well. With any ekphrastic poem like this, I hope to find release from the artistic image so that the poem finds its own voice tinged with the atmosphere of the trigger artwork. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JOEL LONG'S book of essays Watershed is forthcoming from Green Writers Press. His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review , Ocean State Review , Sports Literate , Prairie Schooner , Bellingham Review , Rhino , Bitter Oleander , Massachusetts Review , Terrain , and Water-Stone Review , among others. He lives in Salt Lake City. Next - Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us by Kase Johnstun 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine delighted by what can be conveyed through words. Second Issue ................................................................................................................................................................... "FAVORITES" - 2024/2025 We've Been Out Dancing - poem Northern Climate II -poem ..................................................................................... by Gabriela Halas Some Things to Do in the Face of Death -poem The Concrete Poet - poem ..................................................................................... by Jim Lavilla-Havelin Bruce - poem Past Lives . . . That's Still a Thing, Right? - poem ..................................................................................... by J. Diego Frey Interstellar - poem Sunday Morning Early - poem ..................................................................................... by David Romtvedt Peach - poem Your Last Day in Madison - poem ..................................................................................... by Jennifer Tonge Stand Up Comedy - poem The Organization of Bones - poem ..................................................................................... by Joel Long Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us - memoir Fake Soldiers - nonfiction ..................................................................................... by Kase Johnstun First Sighting - poem Waiting Around - poem ..................................................................................... by Trish Hopkinson The Problem with Mrs. P - fiction That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival - fiction ..................................................................................... by Michael Shay Worry Poem - poem This Poem is Backlit - poem ..................................................................................... by Alexandra van de Kamp Day Dreaming - poem A Love for Loneliness - poem ..................................................................................... by Stacy Julin Michaelmas - poem For Hank Williams - poem ..................................................................................... by Lisa Bickmore The Other Man is Always French - poem The Barking Dogs of Taos - poem ..................................................................................... by Richard Peabody The Little Old Lady in the Woodstock T-Shirt - poem Frozen January Mornings - poem ..................................................................................... by Robert Cooperman Pilgrims in Argyll - poem Motives for Theft - fiction ..................................................................................... by Joseph Riddle Flag (2024) - poem Decoration Day - poem ..................................................................................... by M.L. Liebler Lincoln and Lydia - poem Predictions of the Past - poem ..................................................................................... by Alison Moore The Queen of Hell - nonfiction Ignatius - fiction ..................................................................................... by Karin Anderson Knotted Wrack - poem Acrostic Lifeboat - poem ..................................................................................... by Maureen Clark The Afternoon on the Sava - memoir The Gospel of Overconsumption - nonfiction ..................................................................................... by Scott Abbott Tiananmen Mother - poem And "Tenured" was Dropped from the Dictionary - poem ..................................................................................... by Michael Wells Mastering the Hunt - poem The Fox's Nonce Sonnet - poem ..................................................................................... by Lisa Chavez A Cat Place - poem Walking the Bear - poem ..................................................................................... by Star Coulbrooke The Glazier - poem Vespers in the Great Basin - poem ..................................................................................... by Danielle Beazer Dubrasky Kayaking on Hebron Lake - poem Ode to Everything - poem ..................................................................................... by Marjorie Maddox

Fake Soldiers by Kase Johnstun With fake soldiers in fake armies, we fought over fake boundaries, rivers, mountains, and countries. Our fake generals led men on fake horses into fake battle, and the roll of the digital dice decided who stayed alive and who died on the electronic battlefield made up, at its core, of ones and zeros. On December 31st, 1999, my older brother and I, in our midtwenties, played RISK, the game of world dominance, on my PlayStation 2. We retreated to our cabin at the edge of Yellowstone Park on the Idaho and Wyoming border with enough wine, beer, and potato chips to make it through the apocalypse. It was the eve of the Y2K disaster, when the world’s computers would send nuclear missiles into the air, where the World Bank and credit history of all the world’s people would crumble, and where fires would spark from the fingertips of civilized people thrown back into savagery without computers. Walls of snow, stacked five to six feet tall, surrounded the little cabin. The tops of baby trees peeked out from the snow, their lives too short to stand above the wintery ground like their elders that stretched up to the blue sky and, during the day, sliced the snow with their shadows. The sun dropped down behind the mountains before five p.m., and clouds drizzled more snow onto the already thick base that covered the ground. It was cold outside, but inside, the fire burned. Two cigars sat on the end table near the sliding glass doors that opened up to the deck. They would be saved for midnight. In the mid-1980s, my brother beat me at everything. It didn’t matter what we played, he had the upper hand, and as most older brothers do, he played the upper hand with a lot of weight. He bankrupted me in Monopoly— I went for the fat pigs on Wall Street—Park Place and Boardwalk—while he became the slumlord of the Avenues (Baltic, Mediterranean, Oriental, etc.), stacked up hotels, and made the district right after “GO” a money pit for my flying shoe. He outwitted me at UNO. He knew when to back things up, when to keep things going, and when to turn one of the wild cards I had saved up all game into my own demise. One day, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, bored in the late days of summer when the 103-degree heat finally pushed us indoors, my brother laid RISK out on the floor. I was sick of losing, so earlier that year I vowed to never place another soldier in harm’s way. Hadn’t I killed enough men? Hadn’t I waged pointless battles on imaginary borders that never ended in peace? Countless lives of men thrown to the ground on the whims of their leaders who looked down on them from the comfort of a carpeted room in the middle of summer. Hadn’t I learned my lesson? No matter how much I fought, I would always lose it all, eventually being pushed into exile with no capital or government or land to call my own. “Let’s play RISK,” he said. His eyebrows and lips turned upward with the vision of another imminent victory and the slaughter of my men. “No,” I said. “I’m not playing again. I always lose.” “Come on. What else are you going to do?” he asked. At the time, he was right. “I’ll even spot you Australia.” My greed welled up inside of me. I could own a continent right from the start. I would own all its extra armies. I could demolish Indonesia and its people with two turns. “I’m in,” I said, thinking he had sealed his own fate. I owned Australia, and with much bravado, I pushed forward into Indonesia and Thailand before his Asian forces punished me on the Indian mountains and forced my troops backward. Then the onslaught came in full force, and within two turns, he had vanquished my armies, rolling the dice and his forces across the globe, pushing me out of Kansas and Ontario, cornering and conquering me on the Sahara, and, one army by one army, killing my Australian stronghold until I had one guy standing on Cape Pasley, begging for mercy. I had enough, and instead of waving my white flag with honor, I flipped the entire board upside down, tossing armies across the room, into the AC vent, onto piles of dirty clothes, and beneath my brother’s bed. I was done losing. If I couldn’t conquer the world, I couldn’t handle the thought of anyone else doing it. It was supposed to be mine, all mine. “You cheated!” I yelled, the world upside down at my feet. “I can’t cheat,” he said calmly, which made me even angrier. “ The dice do what they do. I’m just better.” “You cheated,” I yelled. Then I stormed out of the room and vowed to never play him again. In 1999, some people far away from our secluded cabin partied, some sang along with Prince, some prayed, some hid in shelters, and others slept without worries—midnight in 1999 had finally come. We held our controllers in our hands and watched our armies fight on the screen. Our brains floated in a bath of wine, and our game of RISK had yet to be completed. We knew the game could stretch out for many more hours, so my brother grabbed the cigars from the table, and we walked out onto the snow-covered deck and beneath the moon. The cold surrounded us. It was quiet, very quiet, like there-wasn’tanother-soul-for-miles quiet. My brother looked at his watch and counted down to the end of the millennium, a slow methodical count that added to the feeling of seclusion. We knew that if things really did go to hell that night that we would be together out there in the wilderness. “It’s time,” he said. “Let’s do this,” I said. I wish I would have said something less cheesy, but none of us really believed in Y2K. He handed me one of the cigars, lit his own in his mouth, and then handed me the lighter. I clumsily lit mine and inhaled the rich smoke into my lungs. It warmed my gut. We stood in silence for a few minutes. Snow flickered on its descent. At the end of my cigar, I saw the bright red flame that circled the cigar edges like the sun burning at the edges of a solar eclipse, bright reds sparking out from behind the curved edge, but beyond the cigar, no fires burned, no sirens screamed, and no missiles cut through the sky. We stood in the snow until the cigars burned down to the edges of our index fingers and thumbs. Then we walked back into the cabin to play a game between brothers. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link First published in 1:1000 . “Fake Soldiers” was published a decade ago, but it is the one I read 7 out of 10 times for nonfiction readings. It is by far a favorite, still timely and sadly, timeless. Back Back to Current Issue .................................................................................................................................................................................... KASE JOHNSTUN is an award-winning essayist, memoirist, and Manager for The Utah Center for the Book (Library of Congress). Kase is the author of the award-winning memoir Beyond the Grip of Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co., 2015), the award-winning novel Let the Wild Grasses Grow (Torrey House Press, 2021), and the novel Cast Away (Torrey House Press, 2024). kasejohnstun.com Next - First Sighting by Trish Hopkinson Next

northern climate II by Gabriela Halas New morning ice floats the bay, or old fragments that calved as we blinked the days past. The scour of stranded crystals unfold as water resigns to stay. Once this bay held fast as I moved the dogs across — unsheathed the shape and shiver, the steadfast lock of mid-winter. Now I watch the land emit another kind of chorus, a cacophony of flats and sharps unfamiliar to my ears. The dogs, unable to match the measure, fall through thinned aufeis, halt in lead — my urging ended in spurious falsetto. Lungs work at half capacity, the patterned inhale and exhale of an un-patterned bay. Faithless in a future we thought would never arrive. The water, bewildered, as loosened methane destabilizes what we once trusted. Lost in a seismic language, untranslatable as a colonizer’s tongue. The dark imprint of unrequited ground. I hear an old man speak of glacier’s gone: will the river flow, it’s steady lilt, by rain alone? We should fear the shoals who rock glinting bodies out of time. In the retreat of all named matter, I hear the discord rumble on — the fight of voices gathers. A recoil from our role in all things large, mysterious. The dogs turn to me, huddle in question, eyes as brown as an Arctic March. No answer for the soft ground pressed between their toes. I unhook each in turn, let the lead run on, while the others collect in whimpered harmony. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue First published in The Louisville Review. "Northern Climate II" is about being on a northern landscape and witnessing change. The body feels and conveys all in these poems. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - Some Things to Do in the Face of Death by Jim LaVilla-Havelin Next