Your Last Day in Madison by Jennifer Tonge you tell me to come over and I do, to hover helpless while you clean. Finally I can't take it and wipe out the fridge, that old song from Hee Haw twanging in my head—Gloom, despair, and agony on meee. . . I am trying to cheer myself, and it is a bitter cheer: Here's to you leaving me destitute, deprived of a movie companion and provider of sliced pears and tea, gossip, and the Sunday crossword; bereft of conversation, lurching with pauses and laced like a punch with your startling, sly wit; of margaritas on the porch, freezing under blankets, even though it's May, and Hank Williams, Sr., retrospectives. Gloooom, despairrrr. . . I scrub my guts out. You're the only friend I have who’d consider buying a mint-green polyester suit, or rent Island of Lost Souls just to hear the line, The stubborn beast-flesh creeping back. In the front room, after the fridge, I pace tight circles on the barren floor, an augur turning with grim purpose: I will not cry. I will not cry. You say, You're not going to start crying, are you? You look like a little boy who's lost his wagon. Already you've finished, and tell me to come out with you onto the jetty, where you take my photograph. I try to look summery. Then we sit down together and you eat your lemon sorbet. I stretch my legs out, wary in the sun, regarding the tree that swoons at the edge of the lake. Soon you’ll get into your yellow truck and drive away. We don’t say much; there’s not much we can say. Our sadness is inarticulate, previous to the glib deflections of the screen, beyond the pale of the pop songs. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue Most of my favorite poems have been published, but this one remains in my finished-but-unpublished folder after many years and many submissions and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s too sentimental? Maybe it’s to narrative? I don’t know. I like it because it’s both playful and sad, as I was on that last day in Madison with my friend. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JENNIFER TONGE Received an MFA from the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Quarterly West , Poetry , Ploughshares , New England Review , and Bellingham Review . The recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Tonge has taught creative writing at the universities of Utah, Wisconsin, and Texas as well as at Butler University. She served as poetry editor of Quarterly West , as president of Writers@Work, on the board of City Art, and as associate editor at Dawn Marano and Associates. She lives and tends cats in Salt Lake City. Next - Stand Up Comedy by Joel Long Next

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

Mastering the Hunt In Britain, a "red woven hood" was the distinguishing mark of a prophetess or priestess. The story's original victim would not have been the red-clad Virgin but the hunter, as Lord of the Hunt. —The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Lisa Chavez We smell him before we sight him—human rank, scent threaded with death. The grandmother waits in the cave’s mouth on her haunches, scratching at fleas. We gather in the shadows, watch him approach. He is a northerner, pale mane tangled with leaves, hair on his face darker and ragged. He’s dressed in fur—on his head a cap fashioned of a wolf’s face, wizened by death. Empty eyes above his own. Some of us turn away from that gaze He is the master of the hunt, separated from his pack. It’s dusk, early autumn. We streak forward, register his surprise. From the cave, the grandmother howls with laughter. He cocks his head. Looks at us. What does he see? Our beauty. Our flowing hair and red caps. The tilt of our eyes, golden and curious. He relaxes. One of us nuzzles his throat; another lowers herself before him with beguiling glance. He feels our hands, our tongues. When he sees our teeth he falters, but we have already relieved him of his clothes, his spear. When the grandmother joins us, we finish what we’ve begun. Brindled in blood, we lick ourselves clean, our bellies distended as if with stone. Then we rise, shake off these pale skins and lope away beneath the trees, the sky pelt dark, and the moon watching like a wolf’s amber eye. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue Published in Red Rock Review and Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press, 2015). I have long been interested in fairy tales, especially ones that involve animals and transformation. This published poem was part of a series I was writing about animals and transformation. I always rooted for the animals as a child, and was particularly disturbed by the wolf’s death in “Little Red Riding Hood.” I suppose this poem is my way of finding justice for the wolves. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Next

Acrostic Lifeboat Take words with you and return to God. Hosea 14:3 by Maureen Clark The bug zapper flashes Morse code, A spark for each dot and dash - saying - pay attention. Words are being Kindled from these fried insects. The rise and fall of empires depend on Each death. Our elliptical orbit brings another year of language. Why would you take words to return to God? Why not bundles of wheat? Oil in clay jars? Fresh baked bread. Why not take salt? Red wine, purple cloth, things more like worship? Depending on the alphabet is risky with its creation of ambiguity Scratched onto vellum, paint on papyrus, so much lost in translation. Poems Written on napkins and grocery receipts. I can’t deny that I’m compelled, enticed even, To thrust my fingers into a bowl of letters and return Holding on for dear life, writing ‘lifeboat’ just in time, Yielding to the possible safety of the right word. Only language can tell our stories. Some letters generate echoes of the Utterly haunting past, mistakes, the resonance of the earth. Any word can be a talisman. I’ve always wanted to Nail down how civilization evolved into writing. I want to write the word Dromedary because the cadence mirrors the way it moves. Ridiculous of course, but I’d ride that one-hump camel to the oasis any day. Even the unvoiced desire can eventually be put into words, and spells To cure warts, whip up a tempest, make a magic potion. Unless words carry different weights like numbers and can be Rounded up or down. Someone show me the runes! Never mind, I’ve wandered off again, Too full of questions that can’t be answered Overwhelmed with finding a word to rhyme with orange, Grappling with the alphabet, the number of syllables in a perfect line, One too many or needing one less. It’s futile. Please take my words God, Do whatever it takes to return to me. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue First published in Utah Lake Stories: Reflections on a Living Landmark (Torrey House Press, 2022). I like to try different poetic forms. I had never tried the acrostic in a serious endeavor, but I found it to the be right fit for this poem and the idea of creating words as a means of returning to God. I also liked how it allowed me to turn the phrasing around so that God needed to return to me. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - The Afternoon on the Sava by Scott Abbott Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Seasonal Shift Beth Colburn Orozco Autumn The carabiner holding a dozen keys on Violet’s belt loop knocked against her hip bone. The sound pleased her in a way it did each night as she walked the narrow gravel path, locking up the laundromat, the activity hall, and the gate leading to the pool. At the soda machine that drew the last of the season’s moths to its humming lights, Violet searched for the small silver key that opened the change box. She slid coins into a cloth bag and wondered who might be watching. The splayed, yellow glow of streetlamps made it easy to spot folks—easier than it was during the day when cars, bicycles, and golf carts weaved slowly through the trailer park. Bob Lawrence stepped from the shadows of a giant oak tree and stood in the O’Sullivan’s carport. His hands stuffed in his pockets and his head cocked to one side, he appeared to be contemplating his options. He’d been sneaking over to Lucy O’Sullivan’s trailer for months while her husband was on tour in Afghanistan. Troy O’Sullivan was home now, which literally left Bob out in the cold. Tommy approached in a golf cart and waved before she could turn away. Not this year , she thought and hated herself for waving back and for standing there. Waiting for him. He produced a Coke from his jacket pocket when he reached her. “Want one?” he asked. She raised the coin bag and shook it. “If I wanted a Coke, I’d just take one.” “Who bit you in the ass?” “You’re going to be the death of me,” she said. He tugged at the top button of her cardigan. “Come on, you don’t mean it.” At twenty-eight, Tommy had managed to hold onto his boyish good looks. But it was his dimpled smile and the small gestures of kindness that drew the lonely moms to him. The same moms who waited hand and foot on their husbands and kids in the twenty-one vacation rental trailers lined up in rows like soldiers throughout the park. Tommy had spent many nights out beyond the lights of the park on a blanket under the stars with the desperate women. He was also the reason the moms sulked as they packed up their minivans to head back to the city. Tommy was nineteen the first time Violet caught him with the teenage daughter of one the guest families. Violet was out in the woods after dark searching for her cat and nearly stepped on the girl as Tommy scrambled to his feet. The girl held a t-shirt across her bare chest while Tommy made introductions like one might at a party or at the grocery store. It had struck her how calm he acted. Like he’d done that kind of thing before. Violet was thirty-one at the time, but she had felt like an awkward teenager standing in front of Tommy and the girl. Nine summers had passed since then. She looked down at her feet. Walk away , she willed them. Tommy bent down and kissed her cheek. “It’s cold out here. You should go home,” he said. “I have work to do.” “Suit yourself, boss.” He veered off the gravel path and scooted across the grass in the golf cart—something he didn’t get away with during the summer season. Violet locked the change box into position and leaned against the soda machine. Bob hadn’t moved. Earlier in the week, he had sought her out while she stacked towels in the cabinet next to the pool. She’d listened to him go on about Lucy because it was on the park’s List of Golden Rules: # 2 Always be courteous to guests. Rosa Coachman was responsible for the List of Golden Rules, just like she was for the periwinkle trim on the laundromat and the little, steamy Tootsie Rolls scattered throughout the park left by her dog, Precious, an ancient Yorkshire terrier. Rosa was Larry Coachman’s third wife. Larry owned The Pony Lake Trailer Park. For the past three years, he’d taken Rosa to Boca Raton for the winter, where she had family. They’d left in early October, leaving Violet with instructions to keep an eye on things. Buttoning up her cardigan, Violet waited impatiently for Bob to head on home. She still needed to empty the garbage cans over in the activity hall and risked being spotted by him if she used the walking path. The Golden Rules for summer guests didn’t really apply to Bob. He owned one of thirteen trailers that were occupied year-round. Last year he had spent the winter with his brother in North Carolina, but it was clear this thing he had going on with Lucy wasn’t over for him. Violet hadn’t called Larry yet, but she would need to if Bob did anything other than lurk around the O’Sullivan’s after dark. Violet oversaw delegating odd jobs to Bob, so he would stay out of the other year-round tenants’ hair. Tommy had a list of things he would need to do before Larry returned, but he’d wait until the end of March to get any of it done. She knew all the outward things about Tommy: his lazy habits, the kind of beer he drank, the musky scent of his t-shirts. What she didn’t know could fill the lake. She hadn’t spoken to Bob about painting the laundromat or replacing the washing machine belts that squeaked. She took the small, black spiral notebook from her back pocket and the pencil from just above the hair tie that held her ponytail in place and wrote a note: Buy paint for the laundromat . She looked up from her notebook; Bob still stood in O’Sullivan’s carport. She pitied him. His feet were rooted like her own. Winter Violet stood on the porch outside the activity hall looking out over the frozen lake as an ice shanty she didn’t recognize tipped off the skids and landed on its side—rookie mistake. The ice had frozen like little waves on that side of the lake. Anyone driving more than five miles an hour was bound to get in trouble. The owner of the shanty stepped out of his truck shouting obscenities that ricocheted off every bare tree for half a mile. Violet turned around and went inside. The men who fished the lake in winter were of no interest to her. Smelling of fish and stale smoke from their wood stoves, they usually drove onto the ice before sunrise, and most were half in the bag before anyone caught a fish. By noon they were in the activity hall chilled to the bone, drunk, and gobbling up the plate lunches Violet had carefully prepared and sold for seven dollars each, including coffee. She was grateful for the extra money and that Larry had let her use the shoddy kitchen in the back of the activity hall to prepare the food. As for the drunk fisherman, she’d learned how to handle them. Anyone caught swearing, making lewd comments, or complaining about the food was banished to the porch. Standing in the cold, waiting on friends to finish their lunches, no one made the same mistake twice. On the east side of the park where a sandbar made it impossible to launch boats in the summer, the ice was smooth as glass. After cleaning the kitchen, Violet grabbed the skates that hung from a nail next to the back door. The thermometer mounted to Larry’s boathouse read twenty-two degrees. With the sun shining bright off the lake and only a hint of a breeze, it felt more like a spring day than the middle of January. Earlier in the season, she dragged the bench from under the porch of the laundromat to the shore some fifty yards from the sandbar. While lacing her skates, she reminded herself to put it back before Larry returned in April. She kept her hands in her pockets while skating counterclockwise along the edge of the rink Tommy had plowed for her. He often sat on the bench to watch her skate. She cupped a hand over her brow against the glare off the ice. He’d be down shortly. Part of her wished he wouldn’t show up. She should have walked away the night he came by on the golf cart while she waited for Bob to leave the O’Sullivan’s carport. Each year, after the park closed for the winter, there was a moment she should have walked away. The year before, it was the morning Tommy found her pulling her kayak out of the water and offered to help. The year before that, she cut the palm of her hand while filleting several bluegills a retired year-round tenant had caught and given her. Tommy had appeared out of nowhere and used a bandana he carried in his back pocket to stop the bleeding. Back at her trailer, he had cleaned the wound then wrapped it with gauze he found in her first-aid kit. Afterwards, they made love on the living room carpet. And the first year, the year she started counting her mistakes, he brought over a six pack of wine coolers and a bucket of fried chicken one night when the temperature dipped below zero. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.” Violet’s legs were warming up, and the slight tingle cued her body to turn direction and then to skate backwards. It was rote and allowed her mind to wander. Larry had hired Tommy to keep up the grounds and to plow the park roads during the winter months. That was November 1996. Violet had just returned from Italy. She was at the park to close her trailer for the winter. In Venice she had told her sister she planned to move to Madison to attend UWM, but then she met Tommy. During his first week on the job, he asked her out. “I can’t. You’re just a kid,” she told him. Tommy took the rejection hard but continued to pursue her. He came to her place on Christmas Eve and presented her with a tiny black and white kitten. He’d tied a red bow around its neck. When Violet protested, he kissed her. That winter they spent most evenings under a mountain of blankets talking, making love, and watching movies. “Larry’s my dad’s best friend,” Tommy said, when she asked what he planned to do when spring came. “I’ll probably stay on here a while.” “I’m nineteen,” he said, when she asked about his life. “I don’t have a lot of stories. Tell me about you.” So, she told him everything. Things she’d never spoken. She had skated her whole life. Her parents sacrificed everything for coaches, costumes, and travel. She’d been an Olympic hopeful until she took a dare from a friend out at Snider Quarry the summer between her junior and senior year of high school and jumped feet first from a cliff, striking a boulder. The pain didn’t register until someone pulled her to shore. She had suffered a compound fracture in her ankle and a shattered tibia. Propped up against an oak tree writhing in agony, she knew her skating career was over. Laying in the crook of Tommy’s arm, he stroked her hair while she cried. He’d been to Snider Quarry. “You’re the bravest girl I know,” he whispered. She wiped away tears. “I’m not a girl.” He kissed the top of her head. “You are to me.” Violet looked up from the ice. Tommy was sitting on the bench, and she skated over to him. “I’m almost finished,” she said. “I’m going to town to pick up some lumber. Larry wants me to repair the rot in the boathouse,” he said. She waited, and when he didn’t invite her to go with him, thoughts of another woman filled her belly with a swishing sensation. She flopped down in a snowbank. He kneeled beside her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back before dark.” At home, she tried reading a book someone had left behind in the activity hall. It was a romance novel, and she wondered if it was left by one of the young moms. Even though the teenage girls still giggled when Tommy shed his t-shirt before diving off the pier, he only nodded in their direction. He may have longed for their taut bellies and sinewy limbs wrapped around his waist, but he wasn’t stupid. He told Violet so the summer before when she had too much wine and begged him to stop sleeping with the girls. Are you kidding me?” He’d had a lot to drink too, and his tone scared her. “I don’t do that anymore. Jesus, I could go to jail.” “Who then? Who are you taking to the woods?” she asked, hating herself for it. Tommy had laughed at her. “You’re pathetic when you act like this,” he said, before slamming her front door. Staying in the shadows of the trailers, she had followed him. At the edge of the woods, a voluptuous brunette waited for Tommy. Violet recognized her as the young mom of a family staying in the two-bedroom trailer in Lot 26. Tommy took her hand and they disappeared into the darkness. She imagined telling the husband where his wife had disappeared to. She had imagined dozens of ways to hurt Tommy over the years. That night she went home, turned on the TV, and finished off a bottle of wine. Alone. Violet inherited her trailer from her grandparents. After the accident, she moved in with them. She was still on crutches, so her grandpa had built a ramp off the back door. Though her parents never said anything about what had happened at the quarry, the guilt ate at Violet like a virus. Swimming in the lake had been the therapy she needed for both her mind and body to heal. When the nights turned cool and the new school year was about to begin, she asked her parents if she could stay at the lake. Her mother had cried, and her father set his jaw in the way he sometimes did. Her grandparents were gone now. Her parents visited occasionally, but it had been months since she’d seen them. Tommy bought the trailer in Lot 19 across the road and two lots up from Violet’s. He had moved in two years earlier, and Violet spent countless hours in the spare room peering out the window watching Tommy come and go. It made her sick. Sometimes she worried she’d get stomach cancer spying and waiting like she did. She heard Tommy’s truck and used a napkin to mark her place in the book before going to the window. Oreo, the cat Tommy had given her, jumped up on the narrow windowsill. Violet let out a long sigh while tickling the cat under her chin. “He’s home,” she whispered. Tommy stepped out of his truck and walked toward her place carrying a pizza box. Violet sprinted to the bathroom where she gargled with mouthwash and ran a comb through her hair. He didn’t bother to knock before coming in from the cold. Setting a takeout pizza and six-pack of beer on the counter, he smiled, displaying his dimples like a gift. Later, under blankets, he nuzzled his cheek against her breast. “I could watch you skate forever,” he said. She wished the ice would never melt and summer, with its pretty moms, would never come. Spring Larry and Rosa returned the second week of April. With still plenty of snow on the ground and the forecast predicting more to come later in the week, the frenzied energy around the work that needed to be done before families arrived was put on hold. Larry and Tommy were at the hardware store. They’d be gone most of the day. It was too early in the season to set up trailers for guests and too cold to clean out the flower gardens Rosa insisted on planting. In the metal shed out behind her trailer, Violet rummaged through boxes looking for the sterling silver charm bracelet her sister gave her while they were in Italy. The night before she dreamt the bracelet had fallen into a deep well. She knew it was ridiculous, but until she found it, she wouldn’t be able to focus her attention on the countless little things she needed to do to her own trailer before the season picked up. In a box marked Bedroom she found the bracelet in a small plastic container that held her expired passport and the label from a bottle of wine she and her sister had ordered at a restaurant in Florence where a gorgeous Italian man brushed his fingertips over the palm of Violet’s hand. “Exquisite,” he’d said, his accent barely noticeable. “Do you play piano?” Her sister had excused herself when the handsome stranger ordered a second bottle of wine. She closed her eyes and saw his face, his dark eyebrows lifting, curious to know her, but she could not remember his name. She held the bracelet to the light coming in through the door. Two tiny mosaic charms depicting the Italian countryside hung from the chain. She had plans back then. All those years on the ice, she’d missed out on her adolescence. The discipline it took to juggle school and practice made having a social life impossible. Like skating, the trailer park had isolated her from all the trappings and milestones of life. She’d always known this and blamed her regrets on Tommy like she blamed herself for taking that dare at Snider Quarry. Her older sister, Katherine, had planned the trip to Italy the summer she and her husband separated. “Come with me,” she’d pleaded. Italy was another world. Katherine was beautiful and sophisticated. Italian men followed the two women like a flock of birds. Thoughts of leaving the trailer park and going to college had grown out of conversations over long dinners and bottles of chianti under the outdoor awnings of quaint ristorantes . Violet put the bracelet back where she had found it and promised to call Kathrine before Tommy returned from town. Though ice shanties still spotted the lake, the place Tommy had plowed out for her had turned rough with the warmer daytime temperatures. She could no longer skate. Tommy had come by the day before but didn’t stay the night. He’d had that distant look in his eyes. The look her grandfather had warned her about when she first moved to the park. “These young bucks are looking for one thing,” he said. “All the pretty girls and sunshine make them crazy.” Tommy would stop coming by altogether soon enough, and her body ached with the knowledge he would ignore her until the lake froze again in January. A new year , she thought as she dug through boxes to take her mind off him. Tommy returned before dark. When he didn’t come by, she called her sister. Kathrine lived in Tucson with her second husband. “With the girls away at college, I’m lonely,” she said. “You can live in the guest house. There’s a community pool. You won’t miss the lake, I promise.” She had been asking for years. “Tucson is too hot in the summer. Maybe in fall when the leaves change,” Violet said. Her sister sighed. “You say that every year.” Summer Violet stood on the dock wrapped in a towel, shivering. It was after midnight; the crescent moon shot a single beam of light on the shore of Couch Island. The water lapped at the pilings, gently rocking the dock. The movement matched her heartbeat. She closed her eyes. That morning she’d run into Tommy outside the laundromat. He was with someone, a young single mom he introduced as Julie. His smile was bright. Her little boy stood between them. Tommy had reached down and tousled the boy’s hair. The gesture so kind and genuine, Violet looked up past this newly formed family to the boathouse where someone sat outside on a lawn chair reading a magazine. She had craved the quiet of the lake to escape Tommy’s voice and the sight of the pretty mom who stood nearly as tall as Tommy in a turquoise bikini, engulfing them in a cloud of patchouli. It was late August. Violet had almost made it through another summer. Tommy’s adventures into the woods with women had always been discreet. His way of sparing her feelings, she’d told herself for so long, she’d come to believe it. What he’d found with Julie was different. He would no longer come to the edge of the lake to watch her skate. Violet dropped the towel at her feet; her teeth chattered against the cool night air. She drew her arms tight across her belly to quiet the shaking. Last October, Guy Dieter, an avid fisherman and longtime tenant, had drowned out near Cider Point where the water was deep. Guy’s wife had left him the previous spring for a bartender she’d met on a cruise she’d taken with her cousin. Guy’s death was ruled an accident, but everyone knew better. At the time, Violet couldn’t imagine intentionally drowning. Guy had been a big, loud man. He didn’t seem the type to do something like that. She sat on a towel at the edge of the dock and let the water splash her feet. Tommy had never introduced her to anyone—not like he had Julie. There was no need to. Their entire relationship had taken place inside the trailer park. Violet had introduced Tommy to her parents on a few occasions. Her mother still referred to him as the handyman. The water below was nine feet deep. She’d dove off the dock hundreds of times, but never touched bottom. It was too dark and too cold. Tommy often popped out of the water waving a rock or a trinket someone had lost, showing off for the girls on the pier. She wondered if Guy had consciously gulped the murky lake water before drowning. Violet remembered a friend from grade school named Julie. A nice girl with red hair. Skating practice had gotten in the way, and they drifted apart. Tommy’s Julie was pretty in a California beach sort of way—no make-up, sun-bleached hair, golden tan. The little boy was cute, too. Violet didn’t want children until she met Tommy, and he told her that he never wanted kids. She had always understood the deeper meaning. “I don’t want kids with you.” Her grandmother’s voice bubbled up from the lake. “Don’t waste the best years of your life, kiddo.” She had. During the winter, after spending hours on the ice, Tommy would let out a catcall in the morning when Violet raced naked to the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker. Back in bed, tangled up in each other, he’d say, “Damn woman, you’ve got the sexiest legs I’ve ever seen.” She squeezed the tops of her thighs and felt the muscles beneath the soft flesh that had collected over a summer of hard work and little exercise. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a turquoise bikini. By February her legs would be firm and muscled again from skating. She pulled the towel up around her legs to cover them. This year Tommy would spend the winter under blankets with Julie. It would be easy to slip into the water. She could pull herself down on a piling until she touched bottom where she would wrap her arms and legs around the algae-thick, slimy surface and hold on until her mind went black. She’d passed out once while waiting with her mother to buy an ice cream cone at Disneyland. One minute she was holding onto her mom’s hand, the next, a strange man in a blue uniform hovered over her asking questions. The whole ordeal had confused her, but it hadn’t hurt. “Hey, what are you doing out here?” She jumped to her feet pulling the towel around her waist. Tommy jogged down the pier like he knew what she’d been thinking. She hated seeing his worried eyes wide and his furrowed brow. The look of concern. “You scared me,” she said, when he reached her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Julie.” There it was. Her name out of his mouth again. He smiled when he said it. She crossed her arms over her chest to keep from slapping him. “I don’t care,” she whispered. “What’s that supposed to mean? This doesn’t change anything.” The callousness in his voice softened. “I mean between us. Nothing needs to change between us.” He took off his flannel shirt and draped it around her shoulders. “It’s freezing out here.” The shirt reeked of patchouli. Violet snatched it from her body and flung it into the water. “What the hell is wrong with you?” The lake was calm. Tommy’s voice was too loud. He appeared small under the dark sky. “I have to go,” she said. At the end of the dock, she noticed the leaves of Rosa’s petunias beginning to curl. The first sign of fall. She hated tending to Rosa’s gardens with their miniature wheelbarrows, birdbaths, and the tiny picket fences she’d banged her shins on dozens of times. She pulled the towel up over her shoulders and headed toward the gravel path leading home. Lucy O’Sullivan had knocked over the "For Sale" sign in Bob’s front yard with her golf cart the night her husband packed a duffle bag and left. Violet had been out locking up for the night and watched it happen like a scene in a movie. It didn’t matter. Bob had sold his trailer months before to a couple from North Dakota. They were expected to come down soon to winterize the place. Bob had included a short note to Larry with his final lot payment. He’d bought a place next to his brother on a lake somewhere in North Carolina where the fishing was good. Katherine had mentioned the guest house and a community pool. It never got cold in Tucson. Larry had a list a mile long of people wanting to buy trailers and to rent the lots. She would call her sister in the morning. "Seasonal Shift" appeared in The Ana Yearbook 2024 . It is close to my heart because, like the main character, Violet, I often stay in romantic relationships long past their expiration date. And like me, Violet eventually has a breakthrough moment that frees her from the ties that bind. Previous BETH COLBURN OROZCO teaches literature and creative writing at Cochise College in southeastern Arizona. Most recently, her work was published in The Ana and was accepted for The Letter Review shortlist. Beth's short stories and essays have won awards, and more can be found at bethcolburnorozco.com . Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Dear Carley Beth Colburn Orozco My daughter turned four the day before my scheduled trip to Honduras, where I had accepted a teaching position at a secondary school in El Progreso. The paperwork, pictures, and letters I saved from my pregnancy and her adoption were scattered on my bed. Packing would have to wait as I studied her baby pictures taken by her adoptive parents and sent to me through the adoption agency. In one, she was propped up against sofa cushions holding a baby ring with plastic keys, her chocolate-brown eyes and chunky cheeks smiling back at me. The guilt and shame acted like trained assassins hired to kill me. I thought of canceling my trip and curling up among her things. Instead, I picked up the little wristband she wore at the hospital, searching for parts of her, hoping her DNA, like a map, would lead me to her. I had chosen her parents from a stack of letters from people wanting a family. I wanted a family, too, and had promised myself, while in a Milwaukee courtroom, signing away my parental rights, that I was making the right choice. I was wrong. I was in my twenties when I got pregnant, squandering those precious young adult years with the wrong people while making one bad decision after another. For years, I worked in restaurants and bars. Living on tips, I worried about making rent and car payments. I didn’t have a safety net or a place to raise a child. My friend Tammy got pregnant during her second semester of college. She was raising her little girl in government-assisted housing with the help of welfare assistance and food stamps. One morning, I stopped by with donuts. A little pink bike with a banana seat, a flat tire, and mangled training wheels lay on its side on the front stoop of the apartment building. I dragged it into the yard. Tammy and her daughter lived on the second floor. The dingy linoleum stairs and hallway were filthy, and the walls were in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. The apartment door was ajar. Tammy’s little girl sat on a tattered rug, eating a bowl of cereal, and watching Scooby Do. Tammy’s feet dangled off the sofa. She was asleep. I set the bag of donuts on the floor just inside the apartment. Tammy’s little girl never looked up. Outside, the broken bike lay on the grass like a wounded animal. Instinctually, I placed my hands on my belly to protect my baby. I’m not raising my daughter like this. The memory of the broken pink bike, an image stacked among so many I collected like tarot cards during that time, reminds me why I chose to give up my daughter. I named my daughter Carley after seeing Carly Simon singing “Coming Around Again Itsy Bitsy Spider” on an MTV video: I know nothing stays the same / But if you’re willing to play the game / It will be coming around again. Her adoptive parents changed her name to Kelsey. That name belonged to someone I hadn’t held in my arms at the hospital when she was born. I was unable or maybe unwilling to accept the truth. For years, my journal entries would begin, Dear Carley . I picked up the journal given to me by a dear friend who would, years later, die from colon cancer while her three children were still in school. It wasn’t fair. There was a single entry because, even though I had promised to write, it was too painful to address my daughter in such a concrete way. I scanned the entry for clues to help me understand how I came to surrender my baby. Then, as now, it makes no sense to me. March 3, 1992 Dear Carley, -If I wrote to you each time I thought of you, I would have volumes of letters to share. -[The day I gave you up] was the worst day of my life. I felt alone and empty. I also felt about ten years old and that at any minute someone was going to start making decisions for me that would take away the pain and guilt. -Before I had you, I always had a net or web under me to catch me if I fell: My friends and family, even things like money, a car, and a job. But all the security I had could not help me make the decisions I made with you. In many ways, I had to grow up. You have helped me do that. -I am sorry. I am sorry I wasn’t there to hold you when you couldn’t sleep. I am sorry I wasn’t there to catch you when you took your first steps, and I am sorry I won’t be there to answer all the questions you will have about your adoption. There wasn’t time to sink into the dank well where I often treaded deep, dark waters. There was still so much to do before I left in the morning. I gathered the papers and photos and returned them to the adoption box, a plastic tote I kept stored in my closet. I debated taking it to Latin America, but the box was insurance that someday I would return. I would never leave my daughter behind again. I slid the journal along with a few notebooks and a pocket-sized calendar I purchased at Walgreens, into my backpack. It was time to finish packing, and it was time to untangle Carley from the past. I would take her with me as a traveling companion rather than a symbol of grief I had worn like a heavy talisman around my neck for so long, I had forgotten what a privilege it was to have brought her into this world. It's been thirty-six years, yet I still struggle with these words: I gave my daughter up for adoption. In this essay, a breakthrough occurs when I decide to look toward the future rather than dwell on the past. Previous BETH COLBURN OROZCO teaches literature and creative writing at Cochise College in southeastern Arizona. Most recently, her work was published in The Ana and was accepted for The Letter Review shortlist. Beth's short stories and essays have won awards, and more can be found at bethcolburnorozco.com . Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue How to Turn a Hate March into a Jubilee Procession Dana Henry Martin after George Sherwood Hunter Remove torches. Add paper lanterns. Remove logo T-shirts and jeans. Add white Victorian dresses. Add leather shoes with buttons and tucked heels. Add bonnets and bonnets and more bonnets. Remove pavers, grass, black sky. Add cobble. Add a single-mast ship with no sail in the distance, other ships farther, their masts crisscrossed like toothpicks. Add water that looks painted and crackled. Add celadon sky that can’t be teased from water nor water teased from it. Remove screams and teeth and tonsils exposed to air. Add children and four men, one in a costume, one leaning over a railing, one in a floppy hat, one holding a basket full of sticks. Remove stiff arms raised in Sieg Heil salutes. Add gloved hands that clutch lantern poles, free arms hanging or perched like birds on a hip. Remove city. Add village. Remove hate masked as march. Add jubilee parading as jubilee. Remove anger looking for anchor. Add far-reaching gaze like a woman looking out over the wheat she’s grown in a place where nothing should grow. Add soft glow on cheeks. Add pointed toes. "How to Turn a Hate March into a Jubilee Procession" was first published in Sheila-Na-Gig. The question at the heart of this poem is how do we break through the vitriol many feel today and the hate speech and hate symbols associated with that vitriol? I saw Sherwood Hunter's Jubilee Procession in a Cornish Village, June 1897 one morning on social media. I was struck by the way elements of it both paralleled and stood in stark contrast to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The breakthrough for me was being able to transmute the march into a jubilee. Previous DANA HENRY MARTIN is a poet, medical writer, and health- and mental-health advocate whose chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, 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 One Small Change Max McDonough I was suddenly ill as the rattling bus curved around the mountains’ repeating elbows toward the distant summit’s tourist village, last breath before three hours of ancient stairs crumbling up to green ruins. To steady myself, I muttered the memorized fragments of old poems. We look at the world once. Taciturn, oblivious. I repeated them for forty minutes or so, until the spell expired, and the glass ball of pain in the bloated cradle of my stomach shook the poems’ grip on my clenched attention and the passing rusts, grassy wavering of pastures, cliffside, andenes, running streams loosened, broke open, refracted into something unexpected— the rosary prayer I had finally memorized in childhood, bead by bead, to protect my hands from the volunteer mom CCD teacher who paced stork-like at the head of the classroom, surveying the grid of melamine desks the color of a flock of manila folders, my legs already quivering though I was just becoming awake to my internal situation. She possessed the expected vengefulness, slapping with her neon-pink plastic ruler the clumsy, unremembering knuckles of my left hand (because she had seen such a punishment on TV?), the pale summits and valleys of my hand deepening red and white as the beads I should’ve known by then how to pray by. I had no such beads on the bus, but the mossy geography of the words of the prayer like stepping stones surfaced from the flooded landscape of my brain where the murk and water that covers everything receded to issue, after decades, in front of me a path: Hello, how art thou! who art in Heaven!, hallow be thy, thy will be, on Earth, give us , and then the classroom around the prayer which had formed the prayer to begin with formed itself again where the undefined and twiggy gay boy I had been tried with crayons to create the illusion of his favorite color “tie-dye” in the pages of a mass-produced coloring book filled with handsome depictions of Jesus, and soon-to-be tie-dyed doves and tie-dyed execution crosses, clenching his legs in a kind of prayer in the absence of poems, until, like a tragic sideways benediction of food poisoning and bad timing he, I, shit my pants, right there in the church classroom as the faces of the surrounding kids changed, as the teacher-mom oversaw my legs squirming with the question I would’ve asked if not for burying it in my larynx instead or, rather, burying only its beginning, Miss, can I go —my hand not shooting up, knowing what I needed but still not saying so. Then I remembered I was on a bus, weaving through mountains and the vision, if we can call it that, finally compelled me to turn to my friend who sat beside me, quite oblivious, reading Nabokov how I imagine everyone reads Nabokov by watching clouds drift in the nearest window instead, the book open in her lap. I said, Please . Which plainly meant, I am dying. I was not dying, of course, merely preferring death, my body the object again, the soul in this case a thin thread in a whirlwind having no business being where it was though having no volition either, so I relinquished and said thank you for the prayer, thank you for the classroom, the teacher-mom and her pacing, thank you for the poems that were the trouble, the broken ringlets, the unbroken surface of the pond of the poems that bought me the forty minutes or so through which the light of time shattered and burst across the bus forming the classroom of the Parish of Elizabeth Ann Seton in Absecon, New Jersey, reforming as the passing of language to my dear friend to the fluent couple in the front row who convinced the driver to pull over into one of the villages along the tourist road where a shopkeeper, thank you , permitted my Please, please, please, please , my flinging open the door at the rear for my sheepish body, which is living. So much of growing up Catholic for me was about learning shame and pretending that I didn’t have a real body. My body was always getting in the way. The wrong desires and needs meant my body was betraying me. How small could I make my body? How well-behaved and quiet? I tried inverting that in this poem. How much space can I take up? How long can I go on gabbing? What if said what I wanted and needed? 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

Jan Mordenski < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Yes, Emily, Hope Jan Mordenski 00:00 / 01:00 Yes, Emily, Hope Jan Mordenski is something feathery but even you knew of its highly seductive danger. Like you, we tend to revel in the cloudless sight of the untarnished dove that lifts our thoughts then sets them down, so tenderly, in fields of whitening flowers. But you also knew that other call, that of the drifting hawk who inscribes the autumn air in mesmerizing circles— the sort we all made on grey hyphenated pages before we actually learned to write— that we need consider his unmatched sight, his claws, his deft ability to snatch up life pick it to the bone before we ever hope to set down our minds on paper. "Yes, Emily, Hope" was written after I toured the Dickinson house at Amherst. Her famous lines about hope had always cheered me, but her life and surroundings offered insight into the more serious aspects of writing poetry. Only after that visit did I begin to realize the great responsibility we writers have to our readers regarding truth and honestly. Previous JAN MORDENSKI was born in Detroit, Michigan. She is the author of the chapbook The Chosen Pattern (Quadra-Project, 1988). Her poem "Crochet" was published in Plainsong and in Ted Kooser's series, “American Life in Poetry.” 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 Bird News Cynthia Hardy A thump against the cabin wall. I find the body, palm-sized, warm yet, on the porch. One eye glistens, the beak open. Someone says, "If a bird flies in your window he's come to tell good news." But, if the bird dies, and the news is never spoken? Or spoken late, words of comfort flung against a window they can’t pass through? I see your mouth move, like bird wings: the news shatters as it flies. As children we filed into halls nestled among coats and boots, our heads between our knees cradled by our arms. We recited the bad news silently. The skies shone clear and empty. The worst threat-- one not seen--comes in joyous blue. All we love can vanish, empty as the sky. I lay the bird on a clump of moss. Next time, I say, there will be no window glass. Next time the bird flies in free and clear, singing. This poem was written in response to the statement quoted in the poem. I was surprised at where the poem turned, and then, that the poem was published in the Heartland section of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner in 1986 (when they regularly published poetry). This poem was also published in my collection Beneath a Portrait of a Horse (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2010). Previous CINDY HARDY writes from Chena Ridge, Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published poetry and fiction, teaches occasionally, rides horses, and gardens all summer. 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