< Back to Breakthroughs Issue An Amicable Correspondence Scott Abbott amicable : good-natured, harmonious, cordial, agreeable, good-humored, kind, polite No, none of those. I mean something with more bite, more room for spirited exchange. This amicable correspondence will be between amici , prijatelji , Freunde . amicable : between friends. In 1826, officials in Weimar decided to clean out an overstuffed mausoleum that housed the remains of various notables, including those of Friedrich Schiller, who had died twenty-one years earlier. When they could not identify Schiller’s bones in the chaotic crypt, a doctor named Schwabe gathered 23 skulls to examine at home. Schwabe had known Schiller, he had his death mask, but still he was unable to identify Schiller’s skull with any certainty. He finally chose a skull that distinguished itself by its large size and fine, regular form. Großherzog Karl August recommended that the skull eventually be housed under glass next to Leibniz’s skull in the Royal Library. In the meantime, Goethe borrowed the skull and in the night of September 25th wrote a poem in honor of his friend, exploring the shifting relationships between nature and spirit, between matter and mind. Wilhelm von Humboldt saw the skull in Goethe’s possession and wrote to his wife that Goethe was having a burial vault built in the hopes that he and Schiller could eventually lie there together. In the end, the friends never shared a grave. DNA analysis in 2008 proved that the skull in question belonged to someone other than Friedrich Schiller. I decide to translate Goethe's poem. The dense rhymes of terza rima and the rhythms of iambic pentameter are integral formal contributors to the content, but my attempts to reproduce them in English are a disaster. I opt for a more straightforward form. While Contemplating Schiller’s Skull It was in the somber ossuary that I saw skulls aligned with ordered skulls; old times, I thought, gone grey. They stand fixed in rows, once mutual foes, and stout bones that clashed to kill lie athwart, rest subdued. Dismembered shoulder blades! what they bore now lost, and fine and lively limbs, the hand, the foot, scattered, disjointed. In vain you lay down tired, they left you no peace in the grave, drove you again into daylight. No one can love the desiccated shell, whatever splendid noble germ it protected. Yet for me, the adept, were inscribed sacred meanings not revealed to all, as I, amidst that unblinking multitude sensed an image wondrous beyond imagination, and in the clammy hall’s constriction I was warmed, refreshed, as if life had sprung from death. How mysteriously the form ravished me! The divinely ordered trace, preserved! A glimpse that carried me off to that sea whence figures rise transmuted. Mysterious vessel! Orphic oracle, How am I worthy to hold you in my hand? Lifting you fervently, ultimate treasure, from corruption and into the open air to freely muse, turning myself, devoutly, to the sunlight. What more can one attain in a lifetime than that God-Nature reveals herself? How she lets what is firm pass away to spirit, How firmly she preserves what the spirit engenders. (to be continued) Translating the poem from German to English and from the distance of two centuries, I enjoy an opening of sorts. As opposed to my largely monolingual habitation in the American West where I was born and raised, my friends Žarko Radaković and Alex Caldiero live at linguistic junctures. Žarko, who emigrated from the former Yugoslavia and whose native language is Serbo-Croatian, lives in Cologne with his German wife Anne. An uncompromising novelist, he is also a devoted translator of works by Peter Handke. Alex, who emigrated from Sicily to Brooklyn at the age of nine, lives in Orem, Utah with his Russian / Turkish / American wife Setenay. His poetry performances are legendary and his translations from Sicilian include the delightful “Bawdy Riddles and Tongue Twisters of the Sicilian Folk:” Trasi tisa / E nesci modda — It goes in hard / And comes out soft. !Pasta). I have been the fortunate friend of these emigrant / immigrant / translator / artists for more than four decades. 8 December 2017 I show Alex my new hearing aids. He points out that because his right ear is still his worst one, the fact that I can now hear through my bad left ear won’t change the fact that I’ll need to walk on his right side if we’re walking and talking. He has some technical questions. And then he gets to the heart of the matter: What if this destroys our friendship? What do you mean? What if our friendship is based on miscommunication? What if we’re friends only because I’ve been hearing you poorly and you haven’t been hearing me correctly? While contemplating that possibility, I tell Alex about Goethe’s poem written while contemplating his friend Schiller’s skull. My mother, Alex responds, had a burning desire to see her father’s bones. We were in Licodea, Sicily, and she insisted that we go to the cemetery where the family crypt is. My grandfather’s casket is in the ground-level room of the crypt, directly under the altar. She asked a cemetery official if she could open the casket. You can do anything you want in your family’s crypt, he said. I did my best to dissuade her from opening the casket. You know how close to an emotional edge I live; imagine my mother 100 times closer to that edge. She finally acquiesced and we didn’t open the casket. When Schiller died, Goethe was 55 and Schiller 45. Goethe was 76 when he contemplated Schiller’s skull. Žarko, Alex, and I are 73, 69, and 69 respectively. None of us is likely to write a poem with the other’s skull on our desk. Schiller’s first letter to Goethe (first of more than a thousand letters subsequently passed between them), dated the 13thof June, 1794 and sent from Jena to the neighboring town of Weimar, addresses Goethe as High Wellborn Sir, Highly-to Be-Honored Privy Councilor . The letter is a request for contributions to Schiller’s proposed literary journal Die Horen (The Horae). Schiller mentions co-publishers—idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte and the linguist and eventual founder of the University of Berlin Wilhelm von Humboldt. He signs the letter Your High Wellborn, most obedient servant and most sincere admirer F. Schiller . Goethe responds on the 24th of June and then again on the 25th of July. He offers a token of friendship and assures Schiller that he is very much looking forward to a frequent and lively exchange of ideas: "I shall with pleasure and with all my heart be one of the party." Several letters follow and in September Goethe invites Schiller to visit him in Weimar. Schiller responds enthusiastically on September 7th, but with a caveat: that Goethe not rely on him to meet any domestic timetables. Cramps during the night disturb him so seriously, Schiller writes, that he finds it necessary to sleep the entire morning and cannot commit to anything at any given hour. "You will, then, allow me to be a complete stranger in your house . . . to isolate myself so that I can escape the embarrassment of having to depend on others. . . . Excuse these preliminaries. . . . I ask for the simple freedom of being allowed to be ill while being your guest." And with that the friendship that proved so valuable to both men was begun. Goethe later told Schiller that he had given him “a second youth and made me a poet again, which I had as good as ceased to be.” Schiller, thinking perhaps of his delicate health and uncertain future, wrote that, “I hope that we can walk together down as much of the road as may remain, and with all the more profit, since the last companions on a journey always have most to say to each other.” Years later, while Goethe was editing their correspondence for publication, he asked “what could be more amusing than to see our letters begin with the pompous announcement of the Horen . . . . And yet, if there hadn’t been that impulse and will to document the times, everything in German literature would now be very different.” If the Serb hadn’t invited the American to contribute to the literary journal Knjizevna kritika , if the Sicilian and the American hadn’t begun neighborly conversations about poetry, and if the Serb and the Sicilian hadn’t conversed one morning in the American’s house, everything in the field of Serbian-American-Sicilian literature would now be very different. This opening section of my half of the book We, On Friendship (Elik Press, 2022), co-written by Žarko Radaković and with contributions from Alex Caldiero, led to a surprising integration of Goethe’s and Schiller’s correspondence into the correspondence between the three of us. For more about the three books Žarko and I have published in both Serbian and English, see our website . Previous SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor emeritus 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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley Dana Henry Martin The cows dead in the vast pastureland were shot as they grazed. They look like chunks of basalt until the mind adjusts to what it sees. Here, something with hooves, ears, a tail. There, a barreled body on its side, a number burned in its hip beside a brand like a symbol from an old scroll. They died nameless but not without identity: cows one through five, and two nursing calves. All night, they laid next to the powdered road, among the sands and sagebrush, a stone’s throw from pinyons, holes blown from ribs into lungs, from backs into intestines, a blush oval-shaped dish of skin around each entry. The news shows two adults but neither calf. That would be too much even for those bred in this rough country, where generations have nursed on heaving, iron-laden lands. It’s one thing for God to take what rightfully belongs to him through drought, hunger, heat. It’s another when a man stands at the edge of a road that’s not even his, points the tips of his boots at each animal he aims to shoot and kills a whole herd, even the babies. Easy targets if you’re willing to trespass, to get dirt on the hems of your jeans, and flee before you’re seen. The shooter moved under a dark cape below Taurus the bull squinting from the stars, seven girls dancing forever in his shoulder, The Pleiades carried to the heavens to escape Orion the hunter who vowed to kill every brute in the world. Then, morning: the night sky’s inverse. Seven dead cows a black constellation against bright earth, dark angels whose story’s written in the dirt. — “Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley” is based on a story by the same title in St. George News , the online newspaper for Southwest Utah. The breakthrough for this poem was being able to write it at all. I read the news story in 2022, but couldn't write the poem until 2025, despite wanting to. How do we talk about such things? How do we live in a place we love where such things happen? I wanted the cows and calves to have a different ending, a different story. So I gave them one that's part funeral, part myth. That was my way into the poem. Previous DANA HENRY MARTIN is a poet, medical writer, and health- and mental-health advocate whose chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, 2012), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009). Martin's work has appeared in The Adroit Journal , Barrow Street , Cider Press Review , FRiGG , Laurel Review , Mad in America , Meat for Tea , Muzzle , New Letters , Rogue Agent , Sheila-Na-Gig , SWWIM , Trampoline , and other literary journals. She weaves, birds, and hangs out with the cows who live next to the cemetery in Toquerville, Utah. danahenrymartin.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Ghazal with Coyotes, Gaza and Healing Herbs Pamela Uschuk “My eyes went to heaven instead of me.” —five year old boy in Gaza, PBS NEWS , January 2025 Desert wind razors oleander leaves, scraping dawn’s yard. My pup attacks coyotes through chain-link fence to the East. Radio cries for children bombed each day in Gaza’s rubble. Love-starved, rain refuses to kiss wildfires to the East. What is chickpea flour to dead mothers wrapped in white sheets? My shoes catch fire. I would send rivers of milk to the East. On my sill, basil & healing herbs flex from East to West. Finches and mourning doves sing up sun to the East. A rabidcoyote bit three neighbor dogs across town. During chemo, my friend sent dates sweet dried from the East . Neighbor kids dribble, shoot baskets on asphalt, shoes laced to laughing feet, tap love notes to the East. Revenge rape is no quotient to solve torn burkas. Indentured slave, my migrant grandma prayed to the East. My ancestors were massacred by a tyrant’s troops. I am their contrail sending love poems to the East. For years I believed my alien name meant big ears. migrating to Belarus from Siberia far East. Uschuk means whale who spirals down to evade enemies. I’d curl in a blue whale’s singing brain to the East. Where is God when bodies are blown to bone confetti? What herb heals daughters & sons exploded in the East? When Ami Kaye, publisher of Glass Lyre Press, solicited poems for an anthology of Ghazals, I was determined to write one. Before this ghazal, published by Ami Kaye in Nur Melange Anthology of Ghazals , my earlier ghazals seemed wooden, forced. But, this ghazal was an axe that opened my heart broken by daily images of Israel’s incessant bombing of Gaza, by its genocide of Gazan citizens, especially its women and children. I wanted to write a ghazal to honor the dead civilians of this hideously beseiged nation. This was a breakthrough Ghazal for me. I haven’t yet mastered this elegant Persian form, but I am happy with this poem. Previous PAMELA USCHUK is the author of eight books of poems and has received many awards including the American Book Award. She is a senior fellow and board member of Black Earth Institute, as well as Editor in Chief of Cutthroat , a Journal of the Arts. www.pamelauschuk.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue facing it Shanan Ballam I’ve lost the ability to walk I can’t do stairs or go uphill or downhill I’ve lost my beautiful penmanship but I can let go of things with my right hand I used to grip so hard the handrail in rehab— I’ve relearned how to use chopsticks I can open pill bottles and La Croix cans I haven’t lost the ability to write poetry I made it up and down little mountain cascades of birdsong and then silence graceful arcs silver spray of sprinklers in the far field three sandhill cranes flying in unison three sandhill cranes dissolved into the mountain a skunk plumes its luxurious black and white tail a deer bounding a monarch butterfly up close for the first time flashing its wings opening and closing its wings perched on an elm leaf mesmerizing near the river perched on an elm leaf opening and closing its wings near the river opening and closing "facing it" appears in my chapbook first poems after the stroke . I survived a massive stroke in January 2022 that robbed me of the use of my entire right side. It also stole my language. It’s been three years since the stroke, and I still have trouble going up and down stairs and up and down hills, but I have regained the ability to write in cursive, which was one of my goals. This is a poem I wrote in the early stages of my recovery, and the breakthrough is that I wrote down all I had lost for the first time. Previous SHANAN BALLAM is the author of the poetry manuscripts The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability, 2013), Inside the Animal (Main Street Rag, 2019), and the chapbook first poems after the stroke (Finishing Line Press, 2024). shananballam.org Next

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue huntington beach, march 2 Shauri Cherie plovers scurry toward water only to shy from the kiss of waves against shore. A girl, small, uncoordinated on toddler legs, waddles after, feet imprinting into saturated sand, following pointed prints from the birds before they take to air. She stops near the tide and wiggles her toes, bending to pluck a shell with her thick fingers—you imagine it broken, sharp, and colored a dull red beneath its coat of sand, the grains wearing her skin where she clutches. Behind, a call of her name, and she turns, offering her free hand to her mother. The shell remains in her palm as they continue east, and you finally look away and walk west. Distantly, plovers land, resume their race toward shore. "huntington beach, march 2" is one of my oldest poems that has seen countless iterations, so finally publishing it is a breakthrough in its own right. Each iteration of this poem has been a breakthrough for me poetically, since I always come back to rewrite this aged memory with new techniques. Past versions remind me of how much my poetic voice has changed and grown, and it feels liminal to have this poem be both old and new. Previous SHAURI CHERIE is easily excited by travel, curry, and stingrays. Her work appears in Trace Fossils Review , Ghost Light Lit , and others. shauricherie.com Next

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Vocabulary Robbie Gamble Well, there’s well-off, well-got, well-fixed, well-heeled, well-breeched, and well-to-do. There’s flushed, posh, loaded, upscale, affluent, prosperous, filthy stinkin’ rich. Try highbrow, high rent, high hat, high caste, high flyer, high roller, high stepper, living high, high falutin’, high on the hog and High Cockalorum. Or take on fat cat, fat cull, fat goose, even fatwad. Perchance a dilettante, muckety-muck, moneybags, boozhie, blueblood, or bigwig? Consider uppercrust, uptown, uppish, uppertendom. Possibly tip-top, top row, top shelf, top table, top-of-the-tree. Go for Rolling Joe, rolling in it, having it all, having it made, having money (known as:) cold cash, toadskin, green backs, gravy, lettuce, lucre, moolah, boodle, wampum, coinage, wherewithal, capital, mazuma, simoleons, bread and butter, gilt, and silver. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, born into the purple, born on third base, and of course to the manner born (as a:) trust fund baby, heir, issue, scion, Brahmin, beneficiary, trustafarian, aristocrat. We are moneyed, made of money, in the money, playing blithely with our house money since I didn’t have to work for it at all. An earlier version of “Vocabulary” was published in Lily Poetry Review . I’m a trust fund baby, and I’ve been trying to write about my experience of the injustice of privilege and how it can distort human relationships. This can be a rather stodgy subject for poetry, and “Vocabulary” was a bit of a breakthrough in that I found a way to lighten the discourse through wordplay. Previous ROBBIE GAMBLE is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). He is poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine . robbiegamble.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue I Saw Her Standing There Scott Abbott Die Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Summer 2024 Since my last visit to this museum, I have written about the standing metaphor in works by Bosch, Holbein, and Bruegel and today have new contexts for paintings I’ve seen here before. Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of “Charles V” (1532) , for instance, features the grotesque Habsburg underbite of the repressive ruler whose son Philip II provoked Bruegel’s “Two Chained Monkeys” (1562) with Antwerp in the background denouncing Habsburg hegemony. Moving from painting to painting today, from room to room, feels like turning pages of a magnificent and increasingly familiar book. I round a corner and there she stands. I visited her nine years ago and she’s been in my thoughts more often than she’ll ever know. Of all her admirers, she knows that I’m the only one who pays exclusive (well, almost exclusive) attention to how she stands. Sandro Botticelli, who loved her first, loved her so much that he painted several versions, this one @1490 . Another resides in Turin’s Galleria Sabauda . One was perhaps seen in Germany by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Others may have been burned in 1497 by the puritanical Dominican Girolamo Savonarola. Most famously, she rises from the sea on a scallop shell in the Uffizi Gallery (“The Birth of Venus,” 1484-86) . She stands less firmly on that scalloped shell than she does on the solid grey surface in Berlin. She stands alone here, with no one waiting with a robe to clothe her nakedness or to intrude on our intimate encounter. I lean down to study her feet, trace her arches with my eyes, note the weight that presses her left foot into the ground—yes, presses, see the slight indentation. Her right foot touches the ground more lightly than the left, the right knee slightly bent, contrapposto . The toes are long and thin, the ankles strong, the tops of her feet slightly swollen. Feet at work. I stand up straight again, stretch my back. Two people have entered the room and are gazing at me curiously. In the presence of a life-sized and fully naked woman, they have seen me bent down over her feet. She stands on her feet, I could tell them. That wouldn’t help. They leave the room. I stand back to follow the contrappostic curves, a more interesting standing, more relaxed, more supple than the upright stiffness of a figure with two feet simply planted on the ground. Above the weight-bearing foot, her leg rises to a raised hip shifted to the side. Her torso rises vertically in contrast to the slanted hips. Her head reclines to the right. This is a gently curved standing, a balanced, strong, and beautiful stance. The navel punctuates her torso just above the center of the painting. Her vulva is covered by lush, swirling, golden-brown hair that hides and yet replicates the folds of the sex below. So much golden hair! Loose and braided, artful and wild. Twin breasts, one almost matter-of-factly hidden by a hand. Her sideward, downward glance is thoughtful; she’s not interested in a viewer like me. Stripped of mythical context, she is simply a standing woman. A person “clearly and distinctly oneself” would “stand,” Schopenhauer writes, quoting Goethe’s “Grenzen der Menschheit,” “with firm, strong bones on the well-grounded, enduring earth.”[1] Against a black background, on and above a bright strip of well-grounded earth, Venus stands unaccompanied, unadorned, distinctly and thematically her bipedal self. [1] The World as Will and Representation , v. 1, tr. E.F.J. Payne (Dover) 284-285. After exploring the range and flexibility of the standing metaphor in major works of literature, art, and philosophy over the course of three decades, I had no idea how to end the book. The answer came during two weeks in Berlin. Visits to three museums on three successive days inspired short essays on Botticelli’s “Venus,” Caspar David Friedrich’s “Monk by the Sea,” and Giacometti’s “Tall Standing Woman.” Previous SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor emeritus 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

READINGS BY AUTHORS FROM THE NOMAD Intro - Ken Waldman Austin Holmes Jennifer Tonge Kase Johnstun Rachel White Karin Anderson Lisa Bickmore Maureen Clark Ken Waldman 00:00 / 00:28 00:00 / 08:06 00:00 / 10:03 00:00 / 07:43 00:00 / 05:52 00:00 / 08:20 00:00 / 09:55 00:00 / 07:15 00:00 / 23:40 UTAH BOOK FESTIVAL

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

Barbara Huntington < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Our Big Toes Barbara Huntington 00:00 / 03:01 Our Big Toes Barbara Huntington I look down at my toe disgusting thing, although it joggles a pleasant memory my husband, before his death despite his Parkinson’s shaking head his delight, surrounded by giggling girls, the deer-in-the-headlight fear in his eyes briefly replaced by what? Lust, memories perhaps of a youthful paramour, remembered sighs? When I could no longer trim his thickened nails that taunted him my friend said “don’t fool with it take him where they have tools for it” Thus, after our trip to the Apple store where geniuses seemed to want to help him more than their mostly younger clientele we walked back to the parking lot where a manicure salon reached out pulled me in and I pulled him no other customers in the store I never frequented places like those rarely manicured fingers or toes a mountains and garden gal, I relished mud between my toes and besides, my nose rebelled at the chemical smells that filled those places A young woman asked me what I would like, probably assumed Fred would leave, busy himself at a restaurant, store, or maybe the library almost next door But I pointed to his sandaled feet size ten to match his 6-2 height which wasn’t his size any more stooped, twisted neck, face forced toward the floor suddenly all the girls gathered round him smiled, giggled again, and showed him to a chair and Fred obeyed and grinned at them But among the smiles one face was cross An old woman stared, perhaps the boss, Gave me a glare, pointed at my feet so I nodded, sure, as she hustled me to a chair, then pulled out her stool and what looked like a very dangerous tool I soaked and watched the fun young women flirting with Fred He, happy as a clam or maybe a knight, a ladies man pampered and bathed, perhaps he imagined girlish hearts being won I closed my eyes, soothed by the soak until I awoke with a gasp of pain water turned red with the nip of her implement I swear that old woman had an evil grin but I apologized did not want my predicament to spoil his fun assured them all I was ok as she applied some herb and Fred maintained his goofy smile and mollified, I hid the pain Then I waylaid a laughing attendant whispered my plan and she conveyed to the rest my bequest and by the time we left Fred was enchanted by the happy face painted on his big toenail No longer depressed, a happy male That’s the day the fungus found my big toe but oh I’d let that old woman repeat her crime if I could see Fred’s happy faces one more time "Our Big Toes" was published on Vox Populi . It was a breakthrough for me because I could remember my late husband and laugh again instead of crying. I had fun with the internal rhyme. Sometime poems take me forever and sometimes they just flow out. This was the latter. Previous BARBARA HUNTINGTON was born in Albequerque, NM and recently retired as Director of the Preprofessional Advising Office at San Diego State University. She has written poetry, children's books, memoir, and a handbook about how to get into the school of your choice, and her students who overcame tremendous odds to become wonderful healers as physicians, pharmacists, dentists, veterinarians, physician assistants, optometrists, chiropractors and naturopathic doctors. Next