Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us by Kase Johnstun Storms, here along the Wasatch Front in the summer, change things. They have become so rare that when they do come, they sweep across our landscape like hands picking up lost children. They never last long enough to cleanse us, to give us a fresh start, like the storms did during my youth, but they come to let us know that our skies can, if pushed hard enough, give us rain. Then they leave us to ache for another flash in the sky. We go whole summers without them, the dry and hot air settling in the valley as if it were a squatter claiming its land and unwilling to leave. We pray for it to leave. The high desert cries for a drink. Just the other night, I lay in my son's bed. He and his mom lay in ours. I had a big run the next morning, so I didn't want to bother everyone when I got up early to drink coffee, and eat breakfast before heading out. A storm came. We hadn't had our windows open for days. It was early August, and it had been 99 degrees during the day for more than a week. A stiff air filled the house like a corpse lying immovable in a tomb. The trees began to move outside when I lay down. They moved just a bit at first, so I closed my eyes, crossed my hands over my chest, and tried to sleep. A thwapping sound managed to break through the closed sliding glass door that opens up to a deck outside my son's room. I sat up, looked outside, and saw the limbs of our massive trees begin to sway back and forth. And then a shot of lightning lit the sky over Great Salt Lake. Within moments, I made my way around the home and opened any window that could be opened. I turned on all the fans and then returned to bed. I lay there again. This time, sprawled out, exposing as much of my skin to the cool breeze that I could, its frequent gusts bathing me in damp air. It came in waves at first. A hot wind. A cool breeze. A warm wind. A cooler breeze. A brisk wind. Then it stayed so cool. And then the rain came, and wind carried its scent into the room. I did not want to sleep. Instead, I lay there until 1:00 AM, long after my wife and son had begun to snore together in the room across the hallway. I thought about so many things that night just to keep myself awake, to be able to feel the cold breeze and smell the rain and live in a home that had just taken its first breath of fresh air in months. *** Lightning storms were like magic in our Utah childhood home. During the dry summer, when the lightning came, my dad would turn off the television, turn off the lights in the living room, and open the windows that faced the Weber River. The breeze picked up and turned into a wind. We lived at the mouth of Weber Canyon, so when the winds came, they came hard. They rushed through our open windows and flushed out the stale air of summer. We huddled together on the couch, the four of us, and we watched the darkened skyline. And then the show began. Lightning lit up the hill a mile away like the graceful and powerful legs of ballet dancers, touching down and lifting and touching down again. Moments later, thunder shook our home while we waited for an encore. The house had been filled with the smell of a storm. I placed my hands and arms on the back of the couch and kneeled down and leaned against its soft cushions and watched the skyline drop lightning against the night. Sometimes rain came too. We wouldn't go to bed or turn the television back on until the storm had passed. The breeze would stay all night. The windows would stay open until morning. The next day, the house would smell new. And yes, we would talk about the storm as if it were a new show or movie we had all watched on opening night. In 1999, I would leave Utah to live somewhere else for the first time in m y oung life. I packed up my Toyota and drove across Colorado and most of Kansas. The peaks of the Rocky Mountains faded into the dry detritus of the high plains of Wyoming, the winds covering the road behind me in a whirl of sand and heat and thin air so far above sea level. Denver rose out of the eastern slope and then Kansas came, not like a riptide or a wave or a rush of earth that sprung out of the ground, but like the gentle feel of a morning when there is nothing on the day's agenda, a slow and peaceful rise that can only come from the vast plains of soy and wheat, corn and cattle. That day, the day I left my hometown for the first time, I could have driven across those Kansas plains forever. I was on that first real journey, the one that would change the course of everything I would ever do from then on. They all do. All the big moves. All the moves that promise no real return home to the place where we grew up. The sun sets differently in Kansas than it does in northern Utah. It seems to take its time. In Utah, the sun drops fast over the lake and the Oquirrh Mountains, the peaks of the mountains cutting into its bright orange roundness until they have cut it all the way through. In Kansas, the sun does not 'drop.' It does not 'fall.' The plains stretch out forever toward the horizon. The curve of the earth dips in the farthest distance. And the sun settles on the earth's subtle edge and seems to hold there for hours, the rich reds and oranges and yellows of light dripping onto the plains. And the storms. When I first saw a wall of clouds move across the sky, I was a newbie graduate student; I was still a child. A new friend and I stood in a park in the center of the city of 50,000 people, most of whom were students. We tossed a baseball back and forth. It thwapped in our gloves, leather smacking against leather, moments of clarity and fulfillment that always come, catch after catch, when playing in an open park. We played catch for an hour, just bullshitting about our lives before we moved to central Kansas. We talked about writers we loved while sharing our fragmented, short biographies that we believed to be so rich and full and long at the time, both of us barely nearing our mid-twenties. That's when the storm came. It moved across the plains. The sky turned a hazy green, a Kansan's telltale sign of an oncoming tornado, and then the hail came. My friend and I ran to his car and huddled in the front seats to ride out the storm. He cracked a beer and gave me one. We sat there and watched the storm and listened to the radio as the tornado circled the city; we became friends, sitting in a car, watching the storm roll. Once, while traveling back to Kansas from a long break spent in Utah, a large storm front pushed toward I-70 just past the eastern border of Colorado and the western border of Kansas. Like a wall of black night had come for me, it shot bolts of lightning toward the earth, trumpeters announcing the arrival of a powerful demigod that shook the earth. At the edge of the storm, as if a sharp knife had cut through the clouds, leaving a nearly perfect line between the storm and the open sky, the7 bright, bright blue of a sunny, cloudless day struck a contrast so deep in color and texture that it shocked my senses. And the black wall pushed fast against the blue sky, toward me. Where I came from, from the Mountain West, storms do not come like this. They follow our mountains like trail guides from the Pacific Northwest or come up through the Southwest or from California, slowly. We see them coming a long way away. By the time storms reach Utah, the second driest state in the Union, they have long lost their battle against the high pressure of the mountains or dropped their rain in Oregon or Washington or were weakened in the deserts of Arizona and Las Vegas. Sure, there are winds and rain and thunder and lightning. Now, in a world that we know is getting hotter and in a time when we know a shift in the climate could take the wind and our precious dry snow from us for years, we want the storms to punch us hard in the gut of the valley. In 2001, I left Utah again, only having spent one month there after graduating from school in Kansas, I headed to Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin, my first night, I lay in bed in a convent just outside of Trinity College. The building was completely silent, by rule. The nuns hosted travelers like me who had yet to find a place to live. I checked into the massive, old building with stone archways that bent over the stone floors, all parts of building that have stood longer than Utah has been a state, longer than the Mormon church has existed, before my Hispanic greatgrandfather crossed the Atlantic Ocean and married my Native American great-grandmother, long before any of those things that brought me here, a child in his mid-twenties who lay in his bed. It rained hard outside my window. I would find that this heavy rain was not a storm at all in Ireland, only a shower that came most days in the months leading up to winter. But it was a storm to me, a boy coming from a cold desert in the Rocky Mountains. I listened to the rain pound against the window. I doubted every decision I had ever made in my short life. Relationships. Family. School. Drug use. I lay next to the opened window and listened to the rain hit the exterior walls. It splashed down and puddled up on the window sill and clinked against the fire escape ladder. It smelled so fresh, so real. I missed home. Mostly, I thought about the girl from Kansas I had started to date before I left for Dublin. She is now my wife, nearly 20 years later. As a gift, she sent me away with a folding picture frame, a small, black thing that I could carry in my pocket. When I opened it up, I saw her face. When I pushed a circular black button, she spoke to me through a recording. I opened it every night before I fell asleep, multiple times, and listened to her say 'hello.' Six months later, I drove back to Kansas from Utah to see the same girl who put her picture in that little frame. A storm front moved across the plains toward my truck. At first, I was amazed at how thick and predominant the edge of the front looked, how the defined wall of storm drew a line in the center of the vast blue sky. When the winds picked up and began to blow my truck from side to side on the interstate, and as drivers with Kansas plates began to pull the cars beneath overpasses and put on their hazard lights, the awe of the storm remained, and the darkness moved toward us. I turned on the AM radio and scanned for weather updates. The updates ran on repeat as I drove through small towns, one of the few cars still pushing its way through head and side and tail winds that whipped the one-ton vehicle around like a paper airplane caught in the breeze of a house fan. I never saw the twister, never looked out my front window and saw it coming my way, but the radio, keeping everyone listening up to speed, told me that it chased me northeast toward The Little Apple. I would pass a town sign. The radio's voice would say that the tornado was heading toward that town. I would pass another town sign, and the radio would warn the people there, telling them to listen for the tornado sirens and to get indoors and in their basements. The wind pushed my Toyota back and forth across the barren road. Huge chunks of hail slammed hard into my truck, and the storm chased me. I drove as fast as I could across the plains. I turned off I-70 and the storm turned southwest and the winds calmed, and I waited for my girlfriend, the clouds above us just a hazy gray over bright blue. When she finally came out, our official life together started. Twenty years later, however, I lay in my son's bed, and the upheaval of the choices of my youth have calmed along with rising drought of my Utah home. The cold wind comes into the room and touches all of my exposed skin. My family sleeps so close by, their snores in asynchronous wave together. Mom and son. I think about storms, about rain, about wind, and watch the tree branches waving. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us” is one of my favorites, and one I was baffled about when it didn’t find a home. If you know me, I am not very confident in saying that about any of my work! [Editors’ Note: “Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us” was nominated for The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Small Presses .] .................................................................................................................................................................................... KASE JOHNSTUN is an award-winning essayist, memoirist, and Manager for The Utah Center for the Book (Library of Congress). Kase is the author of the award-winning memoir Beyond the Grip of Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co., 2015), the award-winning novel Let the Wild Grasses Grow (Torrey House Press, 2021), and the novel Cast Away (Torrey House Press, 2024). kasejohnstun.com Next - Fake Soldiers by Kase Johnstun Next

The Concrete Poet by Jim LaVilla-Havelin I. this is the first trans mission of the con crete poet report on exhibit at co-op gallery no press release no postcard no crackers no brie II. the alter native paper critic who is sometimes too smart for words but still uses them found her way there wrote: “_______ has found an alphabet of disaster.” III. somewhere between the calligraphic epics of Cy Twombly the incised mud-silica of Dubuffet the Rosetta Stone and J.G. Ballard’s CRASH IV. was this my fifteen minutes of fame? hiding in the basement while the police streamed through the sleek gallery asking everyone my name, my des cription, my whereabouts V. the art critic for the daily who also reviews restaurants, books, and covers the auto show describes them as “a grammar of happenstance or perhaps mishappenstance” VI. I don’t know when I first began to see them as messages scraped by metal onto barriers stories in stone VII. out with the truck with the pneumatic lift cones, flashers the jackhammer and the blow torch it comes to me we’re not in art school any more more dangerous than pastels VIII. it is the opposite of graffiti I remove de-construct re-contextualize present an outlaw aesthetic that makes art-speak go tongue-tied IX. I am so tired of the language meta phor I went to the wall to escape words I hacked out these sections of barrier to see silence as much as any markings deaths or near scrapes with it may have left I’m not telling stories I’m hammering away at walls Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue THE CONCRETE POET is the third volume of a five-book sequence. Though this section was written in 2010, the book is just now (2024) reaching its conclusion. This was the first section I wrote. It’s a favorite because it lays out some of the extent of what the long poem will include. A road map? A first shot of a voice? A catalogue of possibilities. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN is the author of eight books of poetry, including two forthcoming in 2025, Mesquites Teach Us to Bend (Lamar University Press, 2025) and A Thoreau Book (Alabrava Press, 2025). He is the co-editor of the Houston University Press, Unsung Masters volume on Rosemary Catacalos (2025) and as Literary Executor for Catacalos’ estate, he is assembling her unpublished work for a volume Sing! . An educator, editor, and community arts activist for over 50 years, LaVilla-Havelin coordinates National Poetry Month activities in San Antonio. Awarded the City of San Antonio’s Distinction in the Arts for Literary Art, he teaches at The Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center for Gemini Ink’s Partners Program, teaches senior citizens in the Go Arts Program through Bihl Haus Cultural Arts, and high school students as Poet in Residence at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Next - Bruce by J. Diego Frey Next

Past Lives... That's Still a Thing, Right? by J. Diego Frey In my most recent past life, I was almost exactly the same I am now (same job same body shape and fear of spiders same wrinkled cotton wardrobe) except that my hair was curly my name was Margery and my beard was longer. Oh, and I had tentacles where my ears are now. Personal-sized octopus arms, about the thickness of a Marks-a-Lot brand magic marker and long enough to hold in front of my face a cob of buttered corn, which I would eat using the same chewing motions that I do now. In the life before that, prior to the great gene wars of the 2050s, I was shorter, and chubbier, hairier in all the wrong places. And I sold pet insurance to the nervous widows of Omaha. There must be some record of the life that proceeded that but the ether is murky. I was a sort of famous vaudeville act a few lives prior to that. On stage, animal noises would resonate through my enormous, hairy proboscis. In make-up, I had the head of a donkey. My showbiz-name was J. Donkey Frell. A big nose and a fey artistic tendency described my person through an extended series of lives during a dozen generations preceding this, always one of many similar, short, hairy men, weak of will and chin falling always to the sad symphonies of war or at least the singing telegram of venereal disease. Little known fact: Chlamydia…got its name from a character in an unpopular satiric opera I wrote in Vienna in the 1800s. Mostly, though, the spirits describe me as just a surfer of the lower to middle layers of society in a succession of Balkan territories. Notably, once, in the 17th century, I was, due to a clerical error, the Pope for three weeks. Remarkable—my eyeglasses prescription has been almost the same in every life. I don’t want to brag but the gypsy told me that a few thousand years ago, I was a red show pony named Fernutis— rumored to be quite handsome. The gypsy rules our lives. She twists the fabric of time and reality into dental floss. Do not forget to tip the gypsy. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This is a newer poem by me—first draft written maybe 3 years ago. It’s a much longer poem than the previous example. I’ve always felt more comfortable with the short poems, always worrying about overstaying my welcome. But lately I’ve been trying to stretch things out a bit. Mark Doty talks about pushing yourself past the end of your draft to discover where the poem is going to go after your current last line, and it turns out that can be a fun exercise. Mostly I hope that I am keeping the energy all the way through this poem. It starts out with a nice juicy image, so most of my revisions have been along the lines of enriching the subsequent imagery (hmmm…just noticed how close the word imagery is to the name Margery…). Thanks for sticking with the poem over all 23 stanzas! I hope this poem will be an anchor for my new, yet-to-find-an-interested-publisher collection, Froot Loop Moon . .................................................................................................................................................................................... J. DIEGO FREY is a poet living in the Denver area, which is where he grew up and never completely escaped. He published two quite likable collections of poetry, Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked with Colorado publisher Conundrum Press. jdiego.com Next - Interstellar by David Romtvedt Next

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

northern climate II by Gabriela Halas New morning ice floats the bay, or old fragments that calved as we blinked the days past. The scour of stranded crystals unfold as water resigns to stay. Once this bay held fast as I moved the dogs across — unsheathed the shape and shiver, the steadfast lock of mid-winter. Now I watch the land emit another kind of chorus, a cacophony of flats and sharps unfamiliar to my ears. The dogs, unable to match the measure, fall through thinned aufeis, halt in lead — my urging ended in spurious falsetto. Lungs work at half capacity, the patterned inhale and exhale of an un-patterned bay. Faithless in a future we thought would never arrive. The water, bewildered, as loosened methane destabilizes what we once trusted. Lost in a seismic language, untranslatable as a colonizer’s tongue. The dark imprint of unrequited ground. I hear an old man speak of glacier’s gone: will the river flow, it’s steady lilt, by rain alone? We should fear the shoals who rock glinting bodies out of time. In the retreat of all named matter, I hear the discord rumble on — the fight of voices gathers. A recoil from our role in all things large, mysterious. The dogs turn to me, huddle in question, eyes as brown as an Arctic March. No answer for the soft ground pressed between their toes. I unhook each in turn, let the lead run on, while the others collect in whimpered harmony. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue First published in The Louisville Review. "Northern Climate II" is about being on a northern landscape and witnessing change. The body feels and conveys all in these poems. .................................................................................................................................................................................... GABRIELA HALAS immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in British Columbia. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including The Antigonish Review , Cider Press Review , About Place Journal , Prairie Fire , december magazine , and The Hopper , among others; fiction in Room Magazine , Ruminate , The Hopper , and subTerrain, among others; and nonfiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Whitefish Review , Grain , Pilgrimage , and High Country News . She won first prize for her poetry chapbook Bloodwater Tint from Backbone Press (forthcoming). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives and writes on Ktunaxa Nation land. gabrielahalas.org Next - Some Things to Do in the Face of Death by Jim LaVilla-Havelin Next

That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival by Michael Shay On the third day of her first semester, Bobbi was getting ready for what her dormies said was a ballbuster of a chem course when Joanna came running into their room wrapped in a towel. “You gotta see this.” Joanna grabbed her hand and pulled. “I got chemistry, Jo.” She pulled away and went for her books. “No. Come with me.” There was really nothing to do. Jo was bigger and taller than Bobbi, a mismatched pair through high school that Bobbi’s Dad called Mutt and Jeff although nobody in the St. Francis class of 1969 knew what the heck he was talking about. One hand on the towel, Jo used her other hand to pull her through the dorm room door, down the hallway, and right to the big windows at the end of the hall. “Look,” she dropped her friend’s hand. Bobbi saw another sunny Florida day that would make her a sopping mess by the end of the day when she collapsed in her room. Another girls’ dorm was across the creek and the boys had three dorms off to the left and they all looked like they were built as barracks during her father’s war. “What?” Bobbi said. Jo hitched up her towel and cinched it tight. “Down there.” She pointed to the grassy swatch of territory that began at the dorm and ended at Creekside. An army-green pup tent was pitched right in the middle of the summer-browned lawn. “It’s a tent. So what?” “But whose tent? I ask you. Whose?” “How am I supposed to know. Am I in charge of tents at the U?” “No, but…” The tent flap flew open and a guy’s head poked out. He had lush sun-streaked hair and she was beginning to get a strange feeling when the guy looked up and saw her. “Oh my God. What’s he doing here?” He scrambled to his feet. He wore a T-shirt and shorts. He smoothed the shirt which was a bit wrinkled and then looked up again. “Hi Bobbi,” he said. She couldn’t hear him as the big windows were shut to keep out the gathering heat. Her heart beat faster as she raised her hand in greeting. “Hi Paul,” she mouthed to the window. Some of the other girls in various states of undress had gathered. Linda pushed her barely covered chest up against the glass and looked down. She ran her fingers through her blond hair. “He’s cute.” One of the other girls who she didn’t know yet said, “He is cute. Is he a surfer?” “He was. And he’s not supposed to be here,” she said, first to herself then she raised her arms, pounded on the glass and shouted, “You’re not supposed to be here. You’ll lose your scholarship!” He shrugged. “Is he your boyfriend, Bobbi?” someone else asked and all she could do was nod. “He’s not…” she began again. “Someone open the window.” Linda cranked open the window. What passed in Florida for a cool morning breeze swept in. “Paul,” she yelled out the window. “What are you doing here?” He smiled. “Hey Bobbi. How you doing? I’m coming up.” “You can’t. It’s not allowed.” “You can meet in the lobby,” Jo said. “Is he your boyfriend?” Linda said. “I don’t have a date for Saturday’s game.” Paul disappeared around the building. “Oh God no,” Bobbi said. “Is he your boyfriend?” Bobbi wanted to take Linda by the bra strap and strangle her. She’s forgotten all about chem class. “He’s not my boyfriend,” Bobbi said. “I gotta get down to the lobby.” She turned around. Linda stood in her way. “Not my boyfriend.” She moved past Linda and sprinted to the stairway. She shouted over her shoulder. “He’s my husband.” * * * * * Husband. That was the word on Bobbi’s lips when she awoke. That dream again—damn. She looked over at the clock and gasped. Lunch with Carol! She had showered after aerobics class and dressed before stretching out on her bed “just for a few minutes.” Should have known better. The elevator was at the far end of the hall so she took the second-floor stairs. Take your time—stairs are the enemy after 65. Slowly, cane at the ready, she made her way down and shouldered open the first-floor door. The sun-drenched lobby illuminated a fountain surrounded by a flower garden and she noticed other people in the room and someone was calling her name. “Bobbi!” A woman with gray-streaked short hair, a sweater around her shoulders, sat in one of the comfortable chairs that surrounded the fountain. She returned the wave and knew exactly who this woman was. Carol . “You were expecting someone else?” Carol took her hand and looked through thick glasses. Bobbi slid into the adjacent chair and sighed. “Your hair looks nice.” She primped her short hair. “My glam chemo look. Did I tell you that the cancer center has its own hair stylist?” “Yes.” “Chemo brain. I repeat myself a lot. Why so late?” “Took a nap after morning chair aerobics. Had a crazy dream.” “That’s what we get, Bobbi. Dreams, and tuna surprise for lunch.” “Again with the tuna surprise?” “Again.” She jerked her thumb at what they called the food court at Sea Wind Villas. “They never tell us what the surprise is.” “Food poisoning.” They laughed together. It was the early-to-lunch crowd and she and Carol liked to sit and watch, naming names, talking about which of the women may have slipped into which of the men’s rooms last night. It was always a guessing game because by the time sneaking into rooms had begun, Bobbi usually was snug in her room, watching what the kids call streaming channels and there were a million choices. “That dream again,” Bobbi said. “The tent?” “The tent. It always seems so real.” “It was, wasn’t it?” She had to admit it was, a big part of it. Fifty-five Septembers ago, a handsome boy had once traveled 357.5 miles to see her during that first week of college when she was only thinking about getting to chemistry class on time. She scolded him for endangering his and possibly her college scholarship and sent him back on the bus the next morning. They kissed madly and deeply at the station. He waved to her from the Greyhound window. “We phoned a lot during the next month or so. I flew up for the last football game in November. He told me all about the Gamecocks.” “The Gamecocks? Sounds slightly salacious.” “It is, or was, I guess. Paul’s friends always said it with the accent on the ‘cocks.’ Ah, freshmen boys. They still had panty raids on his campus.” “You time travel to 1959?” “It was 1959 in 1969. Freshmen had to wear beanies during registration.” “You’re kidding. Kids are getting naked and tripping balls at Woodstock and 18-year-old Gamecocks in Columbia wear beanies and go on panty raids.” “The Deep South, what can I say? A few weeks later, I got a pair of skimpy panties in the mail. Carolina Red. Big black lettering: Gamecocks with Cocks capitalized.” “Did he snag it in a panty raid?” “God no. The price tag was still on it. Give him some credit.” “OK, I’ll give him some credit. But what was he like? Was he nice to you?” The first time she dreamed the dream, she cried into her pillow. a thousand tears. It might have been the boy—his name was Paul—or it might have been her dead husband—his name was Jim. Paul had broken her heart or she had broken his—they were only 18. Jim broke her heart a dozen times, mostly without meaning to, just the way men do. The kids too, all three of them, their visits tapering off with time, as they moved away from Florida to make their own memories. They were all heartbreakers. “It’s more memory than dream. He did hitchhike to campus and pitch a tent outside my dorm,” she said. “Not sure where he got the tent. Caused quite a stir. He was a handsome boy. He spent the night in my room and my roomie—she was my best friend from high school—was kind enough to go elsewhere.” “You shoot off any fireworks?” She laughed. “There were fireworks that night at Disney Resorts. People might have heard me all over the hotel.” “Great memory.” “God love you. Those visions hang on, don’t they? Doctors lie about old age. You forget something and they say Alzheimer this and Alzheimer that. It’s not the forgetting that’s the problem. It’s the remembering.” She paused. “I was reading a book of stories by Jane Campbell, Cat Brushing, it’s very sensual. Anyway, it was her first published book when she was 80. One of her characters talks about the ‘persecution of remembering.’ The character, I can’t remember her name, says that we remember so much and late at night ‘remorse bites hard.’ ” “Cheery.” “Not supposed to be. You ever felt it?” A shadow passed across her friend’s eyes and she composed her mouth in a grim line. “Of course,” she said quietly. “Sure.” “You want to talk about it?” “No.” “OK, but you would think our imaginations would be in tatters by the time we get to Sea Wind Villas. But here we are, talking about the past.” “You ever see Paul again?” “That November, I took the bus to Columbia for the last football game of the season. Stayed with him in his dorm which was a definite no-no. Went to the game and then an all-you-caneat buffet place that didn’t like the students coming in and scarfing down all the food. We cruised downtown after. Went out into the sticks and drove by a tent revival—see a lot of those in South Carolina. We parked and went in. Preacher up front chided his audience about this and that. Halfway through, he asked if there were any couples in the congregations who wanted to get married in the eyes of Jesus. Paul pulled me up there and I was too buzzed to resist. The preacher came over, peeked down my halter top, and put his hand on my forehead the other on Paul’s. “Do you believe in the Lord God as your savior?” he asked. “Paul said yes. I nodded.” “The preacher told us we were married in the eyes of the Lord. He had strong hands and gave us a little shove and we fell into the arms of some of the preacher’s people and they showed us a donation plate and asked for money to do God’s work. Paul dug into his pocket, grabbed some change and dumped it on the plate. He took my hand we ran out of there into the night. A beautiful fall night with lots of stars. Paul wrapped me in his arms and said, ‘Bobbi, we’re married now.’” " 'Not in the eyes of the church we aren’t.' 'This was a church. Sort of.' 'Not our church.' I told Paul to be sensible. Told him this tent revival was a carnival religion, all show. “I may have hurt his feelings. His eyes looked so funny. He said that Catholic priests put on a show. He had a point. “I told him I was getting cold and he slipped my arms into his high school letter jacket and led me back to the car. His friends joined us. Paul said let’s go dancing to celebrate and we went to one of the 3.2 bars. Paul danced with a succession of women and I just watched. There was something off about him. We’d smoked a joint in the car but he was flying high on something else. He came over and pulled me to the dance floor. Showed me how to do the Carolina Shag and I caught on pretty quick. I started dancing with another guy and looked up to see Paul hanging all over this other girl. He just wasn’t there, you know. We got back to the dorm at 2 a.m. and had to slip in the back door—the guys propped it up with a rock on weekends since curfew was midnight. The R.A.’s didn’t make a big deal of it. We got to Paul’s room and he was all over me and I pushed him away, told him I was on my period. For a second there, I saw daggers in his eyes and I thought something bad was going to happen. But his face went from some sort of madness to the look I was used to, friendly Paul, Paul the boyfriend, Paul the guy I’d known since eighth grade. He turned and stormed out of the room. “The next morning, I found my own way to the airport. Was a bit rattled when I finally got back to my dorm. Jo said I looked like shit and what happened and I said I got married and she laughed. I didn’t have the energy to tell the story but the next day in the cafeteria, the girls asked me about my trip and I told the whole story and I could tell they were worried about me. Jo put her hand on my forehead and said I was burning up and took me to the student clinic. Next thing I know I’m in the hospital with pneumonia and I miss all of my classes. I am sad and pissed off at the same time. “My parents come to pick me up and take me home early for Thanksgiving. I had to call all of my professors. I was just a basket case. I didn’t go back to school in December. The week before Christmas, Mom brings me a letter. ‘Who do you know at Fort Jackson?’ ” “Nobody,” I said. She handed me the letter. It was from Paul. He addressed me as his ‘Dear wife.’ He then wrote he’d got draft number five in the Selective Service Lottery on Dec. 1 and didn’t like school anyway and had joined up the next day and now was in basic at Fort Jackson. His last line: I guess this is goodbye. He signed it ‘Your Devoted Husband.’ ” Carol grabbed her hand. “You’re not going to tell me he got killed in Vietnam?” “I am not. It was worse. He came back a junkie. It was my senior year and I was walking on the beach in Daytona with my new boyfriend and a car went by that looked familiar. A guy got out of the back seat, while it was moving, tripped and rolled in the sand, beer flew out of his hand. Spring break, you know, not unusual. You can drive on the beach there, or at least you could back then. Guys sitting up, swigging Bud, driving their convertibles with their feet. Guys trying to be cool for all the girls who were also trying to be cool. Paul stood, brushed the sand away, staggered, and looked right at me. “He yelled: ‘My lovely wife!’ Almost got hit by a car and stumbled over to me. My new boyfriend gave me a strange look. Paul wrapped me in his arms. Reeked of beer and sweat. He tried to kiss me and his beard scratched my face and I pushed him and he fell on his ass. He got right back up and stared at me with those dagger eyes I saw in the South Carolina dorm that night. My poor boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend by the end of the day, walked over to challenge him. Paul looked down at Lloyd who was about six inches shorter but muscular. Both seemed ready for a fight. Paul just looked down at him, shook his head, and stumbled off, splashing through the shore break like he was going somewhere. “The last time I saw him was at the 25th high school reunion, 1994. He asked me to dance, told me he had met his second wife at an NA meeting, said he got his shit together working with fellow vets at the VA. I was a little drunk and wanted to kiss him right there, not him in his 40s but his 18-yearold face, that lovely face. But it didn’t exist anymore. I looked over at our table and saw my husband flanked by two of my female classmates who never gave me the time of day in the hallowed halls of St. Francis. I told Paul I had to rescue my husband. I squeezed his hand and let go. As I walked away he said, ‘We’re still married, you know.’ I kept walking, showed him the back of my hand and was just about to respond with ‘ No we are not.’ But the words caught in my throat. I turned to him and said, ‘I know.’ He smiled. He was missing a couple teeth but it was still a beautiful smile. I got to our table, shooed away those she-devils, took Jim upstairs and had my way with him. Several times.” She paused. Saw Jim’s face as it was that night, and then his still-life face in the casket at the front of the church. “I miss him.” Carol took her hand. “I miss my crazy Richard. Went too soon. It still stings.” The lobby loudspeaker crackled into life. “Ladies and gentlemen, luncheon will now be served at Sea Wind Villas Food Court.” There was a lot of shuffling and squeaky rollator wheels. “You ready for tuna surprise?” asked Carol. “No,” Bobbi said. “What about Mickey D’s? I love those little burgers with the shiny cheese and tiny onions and pickles and ketchup. We used to get ‘em for fifteen cents.” “Gosh you’re old.” She gripped Bobbi’s arm. “Let’s get it delivered.” Carol plucked her phone from the mostly empty spaces of her bra, punched in a few buttons and made the selections. “And two chocolate shakes,” Bobbi added. “Large.” Carol punched a few more keys, clicked off the app, and slipped it back in her bra. “Fifteen minutes. Want to eat on the patio?” Bobbi nodded, used the cane for leverage to stand. They took each other’s arms and walked into the sunshine. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue Sometimes an idea kicks around in my head until I stumble upon a way to tell it. I first wrote this as straight narrative and then reminiscence. It’s about a dream I’ve had over the years and I decided to let the dream tell the story through one of the women characters. I thought it added a bit of magic to the telling. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MICHAEL SHAY writes short stories and essays. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams from Coffee House Press. His first book of short stories is The Weight of the Body . He recently completed an historical novel set in 1919 Colorado with the working title Zeppelins over Denver . Next - Worry Poem by Alexandra van de Kamp 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

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