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< Back to Breakthroughs Issue WEST ON PICCADILLY Shauri Cherie Stop for a moment to feel the air grow colder, chilled by the rush of passersby milling on steps, on escalators, staying on the right to make way for those rushing for the platform. Take a step and listen to the sound of footfall and the grind of the train on the rail and the faint trill of Mind the gap over the speakers. Push between two teenagers stumbling out onto the platform for Russell Square. There’s little room on the Tube at this hour, but squeeze yourself into a corner, wrap your hand around the bar, and bear it as more and more people crowd around you. Some might have come from King’s Cross (they keep luggage tucked protectively between their knees as if anticipating the worst) or perhaps they’re on the journey home tonight (the woman next to you has mascara smudged beneath her eyelids and a seated old man is slumped forward onto his wrinkled palms). The doors will shut behind with a mechanical hiss. Sway with the lurch of the train as it departs, see a girl holding her mother’s hand shift her footing. The train twists and turns and tilts until brakes squeal to a stop at Holborn, Covent Garden, and, finally, Leicester Square. The doors open to a white-tiled wall, and here, the people move faster, faster, faster, so pause in this moment to watch the tide of bodies swell around you. Wait to watch a group of girls sway concert-drunk and tourists take selfies to post on Instagram, men hovering next to their wives, children swinging their feet in their seats while parents shush them and apologize to those seated beside. Wait here until the doors begin to hiss once more, then you, an American in a country that isn’t your own, step off the Tube and onto the platform, careful to mind the gap. "West on Piccadilly" was the first poem I wrote for my European travel lyric sequence as an undergrad. It was originally published in Outrageous Fortune , but this version has been edited in preparation for a chapbook. It's sensory-focused, meant to capture the barrage overwhelming the senses of someone from a rural Utah town in the heart of London. It was a breakthrough experience that boosted my confidence, and rereading it brings the Tube vividly back again. 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 COLD MARBLE, HOT MEMORIES Lev Raphael I was in love with museums before I even visited one. My parents had a small, battered, brown suitcase filled with art postcards from London, Paris, and all across Belgium, where they lived for five years after WWII. They never spoke much about surviving the Holocaust, and the hundreds of postcards seemed to fill that silence for me. Europe was art back then, not death and destruction, and I communed with those images as intently as someone deep in prayer. Sitting on the linoleum-covered floor in front of them, I could have been one of those guys in a science fiction movie opening a mysterious box whose unseen contents give off an unearthly and mesmerizing glow. My Washington Heights bedroom had an unobstructed view of the George Washington Bridge and watching its lights come on at dusk was one of my quiet joys, as soothing as poring over these photos of statues and paintings. But nothing prepared me for the revelations on my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A fan of Ancient Greek history and Greek myths in elementary school, I was immediately drawn to the galleries of Greek and Roman statues. I already sensed I was different from my classmates and I was electrified by the bold nudity on one pedestal after another, bathed in tender natural light from above, or so it seemed, and lit up even more by their own perfection. With my parents off in some other gallery, I wandered and stared and studied—and who could accuse me of anything unwholesome or dangerous? I felt safe there, sheltered, wordlessly embraced. It was a much later piece, though, that changed my life: Canova's Perseus . At the time, this statue loomed on a landing at the top of a mammoth staircase, its placement making the space around it feel like an altar. Shy then, bookish, easily bullied, and living in the shadow of an older brother who seemed to get all the attention I craved, I relished the Perseus, would have gulped it down if it were a drink. Easily three times my size, Perseus was all graceful, cool triumph as he held Medusa's grotesque head away from himself. His strength, his beauty, and yes, his perfect nude body, filled me with longing not just to be him, but to create something, anything. I returned to him on each visit, engrossed, inspired, and many years later wrote a story in which he figures as an icon of gay desire. Every statue from the ancient world that I've encountered since that day, whether in the Santa Barbara Museum or Berlin's Pergamon Museum, reminds me of the discovery of such unparalleled beauty and the nascent discoveries of self that waited for me in my teens. I've even felt Perseus's power at London's Tate Modern Museum, wandering through an exhibition of Brancusi statues which couldn't have been more unlike Canova's work, but their beauty triggered vivid memories of his. And made me cry, which alarmed the nearest guard. I muttered something about being overwhelmed and wandered off, dazed but replete. Published in the Gay & Lesbian Review . I grew up in an immigrant family where money was tight but the love of art and music was the air I breathed. My parents took me to concerts and musicals from a very early age and we visited the major museums in Manhattan so often that I grew to have favorite pieces like Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art and "Rembrandt Contemplating a Bust of Homer" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were works that mesmerized me with their beauty, especially since I had no talent whatsoever myself as a visual artist. But I did have words and the words for the sculpture described here apparently lay dormant until early in the pandemic when in my relative isolation from friends, family and even neighbors, I found myself writing essay after essay as memories filled my days. I was never truly alone. And art was where it all began. Previous LEV RAPHAEL is an editor, mentor, writing coach and the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. writewithoutborders.com and levraphael.substack.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue I SAW HER STANDING THERE Scott Abbott Die Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Summer 2024 Since my last visit to this museum, I have written about the standing metaphor in works by Bosch, Holbein, and Bruegel and today have new contexts for paintings I’ve seen here before. Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of “Charles V” (1532) , for instance, features the grotesque Habsburg underbite of the repressive ruler whose son Philip II provoked Bruegel’s “Two Chained Monkeys” (1562) with Antwerp in the background denouncing Habsburg hegemony. Moving from painting to painting today, from room to room, feels like turning pages of a magnificent and increasingly familiar book. I round a corner and there she stands. I visited her nine years ago and she’s been in my thoughts more often than she’ll ever know. Of all her admirers, she knows that I’m the only one who pays exclusive (well, almost exclusive) attention to how she stands. Sandro Botticelli, who loved her first, loved her so much that he painted several versions, this one @1490 . Another resides in Turin’s Galleria Sabauda . One was perhaps seen in Germany by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Others may have been burned in 1497 by the puritanical Dominican Girolamo Savonarola. Most famously, she rises from the sea on a scallop shell in the Uffizi Gallery (“The Birth of Venus,” 1484-86) . She stands less firmly on that scalloped shell than she does on the solid grey surface in Berlin. She stands alone here, with no one waiting with a robe to clothe her nakedness or to intrude on our intimate encounter. I lean down to study her feet, trace her arches with my eyes, note the weight that presses her left foot into the ground—yes, presses, see the slight indentation. Her right foot touches the ground more lightly than the left, the right knee slightly bent, contrapposto . The toes are long and thin, the ankles strong, the tops of her feet slightly swollen. Feet at work. I stand up straight again, stretch my back. Two people have entered the room and are gazing at me curiously. In the presence of a life-sized and fully naked woman, they have seen me bent down over her feet. She stands on her feet, I could tell them. That wouldn’t help. They leave the room. I stand back to follow the contrappostic curves, a more interesting standing, more relaxed, more supple than the upright stiffness of a figure with two feet simply planted on the ground. Above the weight-bearing foot, her leg rises to a raised hip shifted to the side. Her torso rises vertically in contrast to the slanted hips. Her head reclines to the right. This is a gently curved standing, a balanced, strong, and beautiful stance. The navel punctuates her torso just above the center of the painting. Her vulva is covered by lush, swirling, golden-brown hair that hides and yet replicates the folds of the sex below. So much golden hair! Loose and braided, artful and wild. Twin breasts, one almost matter-of-factly hidden by a hand. Her sideward, downward glance is thoughtful; she’s not interested in a viewer like me. Stripped of mythical context, she is simply a standing woman. A person “clearly and distinctly oneself” would “stand,” Schopenhauer writes, quoting Goethe’s “Grenzen der Menschheit,” “with firm, strong bones on the well-grounded, enduring earth.”[1] Against a black background, on and above a bright strip of well-grounded earth, Venus stands unaccompanied, unadorned, distinctly and thematically her bipedal self. [1] The World as Will and Representation , v. 1, tr. E.F.J. Payne (Dover) 284-285. After exploring the range and flexibility of the standing metaphor in major works of literature, art, and philosophy over the course of three decades, I had no idea how to end the book. The answer came during two weeks in Berlin. Visits to three museums on three successive days inspired short essays on Botticelli’s “Venus,” Caspar David Friedrich’s “Monk by the Sea,” and Giacometti’s “Tall Standing Woman.” Previous SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor emeritus of Integrated Studies, Philosophy, and Humanities at Utah Valley University. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger (Common Consent Press, 2022). He has translated works by Nobel Prize Awardee Peter Handke and botanist Gregor Mendel. scottabbottauthor.com Next

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue GAMBLE PATRILINEAGE Robbie Gamble B eginning with James, of Scotch-Irish stock, shipped out to America from Enniskillen at sixteen, following the magnetic call of Manifest Destiny, pulling up on the stockyard banks of Cincinnati. There he learned the soapmaking trade, and soon fell in with William Procter, candlemaker. They pooled funds, and in 1837 co-founded the Procter & Gamble company. Energetic, shrewd stockpilers of materials, they grew the business well, filled coffers in Civil War contracts on the Union side, shipping bar soap and candles downstream into the maw of the conflict. And when the armies stumbled home they expanded as the nation, reconstructing, flexed its wealth westward. D avid, son of James, born into wealth amidst the bright industrial flush of household goods, cradled high on the bow of flagship Ivory Soap, while America scoured itself clean, striving toward a fresh end to the century. David served P&G as company Secretary, retiring in 1893 to sail the world with sons, overseeing Presbyterian missions charged with Oriental evangelization. Disembarking, he shuttled between showcase mansions in Cincinnati and Pasadena, the latter now a national landmark, the Gamble House. C larence, son of David, unexpected youngest of three. Prodigal, self-possessed, he posted first in his class at Princeton, 1914, then second through Harvard Medical School. His generation unburdened by the reins of soap production, instead he got a trust fund, his first million at twenty-one. Clarence caught the bug of Eugenics, pseudo-science of race and class superiority, dreaded humanity being dragged down by bad genes. He never built a medical practice, instead became a population-manipulator of one, urging for more babies amongst the educated, testing new contraceptives for the poor, funding rogue clinical trials, advocating sterilization of the feeble-minded in the rural South, always striving to constrain human sprawl in worrisome backward societies around the globe. W alter, son of Clarence, third of five redheaded siblings, the quiet, studious one. He lived for scientific questing; like his father he studied medicine, and unlike him he kept at it, specializing in pediatric cardiology, designing new pacemaking devices in the 1960s to impose strict rhythms on sick kids’ faltering hearts. He kept a hand in the family’s Great Cause of world population control, sitting on their foundation board, rattled about in his research lab with a menagerie of subject rats and cows, rounded on patients, and biked in to work in all kinds of weather, for over thirty years. R obbie, son of Walter, first of three boys, came into unexpected millions at eighteen. He grew deep discomfort for his wealth, shifted from Harvard to the Bowery in 1982, to work among homeless folks, and with his first wife Martha gifted away a fortune. He became a nurse practitioner to better care for people scraping at the margins, raised three kids, lost a marriage and a brother, discovered Anna, an orchard, a shining reverence for words. If there’s a breakthrough in the unpublished poem “Gamble Patrilineage,” it’s in the influence of my first wife, Martha, who helped me to see through the constraints of the patriarchy and the trappings of wealth, and turn away from family convention to become a more authentic agent for change in the world. My family has an almost biblical sense of self-importance, and I find it useful to co-opt that narrative with an over-the-top generational structure that shows the undue focus given to the men on the family tree. Previous ROBBIE GAMBLE is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). He is poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine . robbiegamble.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE LONG HAUL Shanan Ballam The black ribbon of highway unfurls before us. It is well past midnight. The stroke and I are driving a semi on a three-year road trip. We are exhausted, sticky, smelly and stiff from the long, stale ride. We haven’t been out of the truck for hours and hours. We haven’t had a chance to stretch our legs. We are both wearing black plastic AFO’s that makes our right legs numb. Our bladders ache. We have no idea if or how it ends. We don’t know where we’re going. We just know we must drive. Because that’s all we know how to do. We must keep moving. But we don’t know why. The situation is so confusing. Every time I turn my head when I think I see the answer it dissipates like smoke. The stroke is driving. Bleary-eyed the stroke turns the wheel over to me. The seat is warm where the stroke sat. I take the sweaty wheel in my grip. We’re hauling precious cargo, dragging its heavy load behind us like a tail. In the trailer we carry all our grief. We can’t afford to lose this load. I drive carefully through the night. The stroke sleeps in the passenger seat. I drive until the white morning sun seeps through the cab windows. I glance at the stroke. She has brown hair and is wearing my red shirt. When she lifts her sleepy head I see she has my brown eyes— my nose and my mouth— she even has my four moles high up on her cheek, that look like the basin of the big dipper. She is me me me. She has been me all along. We know what we have to do: together we unhitch the heavy trailer of our grief. We leave it at a grimy truck stop in the middle of nowhere. The stroke says I’ll drive— but the words come from my mouth. I have written several poems about my stroke, comparing it to a horse that falls on my chest, a rat, my abusive stepfather, my drunk brother-in-law who molested me. The stroke is always an enemy. This poem was the first time I saw that the stroke was actually me—had always been me. This idea was a breakthrough, to see the stroke not as an adversary, but as myself. Previous SHANAN BALLAM is the author of the poetry manuscripts The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability, 2013) , Inside the Animal (Main Street Rag, 2019) , and the chapbooks first poems after the stroke (Finishing Line Press, 2024) and My Paper Boat (Moon in the Rye Press, 2026). shananballam.org Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE WHIZ KID Beth Colburn Orozco “To thine own self be true.” Ray had tried. Sheri set down a bottle of Miller Light and a shot of whisky in front of Ray. A twitchy kid reeking of cologne tossed a twenty on the bar. “They got happy hour?” Ray downed the whiskey. “Two for one tap beers.” Payday Friday, and the place was packed. The railyard was under construction. Union Pacific had brought in an outfit from Milwaukee to get the job done. These young bucks had shitty attitudes and money to throw around. Ray reached into the top pocket of his jean jacket, hoping to find some cash. Instead, his fingers landed on the one-year AA chip. He traced the raised triangle with his thumb. Unity. Service. Recovery . He’d failed at all three. A stream of yard rats in greasy Carhart jackets strutted into The Tracks. This had been going on for months. At eight o’clock, the crowd would file out like a herd of cattle when the new club across the street opened. If he could hold out until then, maybe Sheri would take him back to her place. She’d done it before. They had gone to school together, he and Sheri. Back then he’d been famous, a local celebrity. He hadn’t made time for Sheri or girls like her, the quiet types who grew prettier as you got to know them. No, he’d gone for the curvy girls in tight skirts. Bimbos , his mom had called them. Gorgeous girls who shined until they didn’t, which usually happened right after high school. Sheri poured him another shot. “Are you okay?” she asked. She hadn’t judged him. He’d sat at the bar for a year ordering Cokes she served in pint glasses. Last Thursday, he’d set down a fifty and ordered a beer and a bump. “You sure?” was all she said. Ray had punched a smart-ass drunk in the face at a local hockey game. Broke his nose and was court-ordered to attend AA for a year. Well, at least he’d done that. He’d managed to stay sober for a year. And he’d paid for it. The nightmares got worse. He’d thought about killing himself, even adding it to the to-do list in his head. Last Thursday, the year ran out on the judge’s order, and Ray got back on the proverbial horse. He studied the crowd through the chipped mirror behind the bar. O’Sullivan owned the place along with half the buildings in this rundown section of town. Ray had gone to school with him. He’d paid Ray for copies of his homework. O’Sullivan was still cutting corners. The Tracks was a dump. The Budweiser clock above the pool table read half past six. It was set fifteen minutes fast. Sheri yelled Last Call early six nights a week, and six nights a week, some drunk complained. “They sure got you hustling tonight,” Ray said. A bear of a guy in overalls bent over the bar and waved an empty beer bottle in the air. “I’ll be back.” Sheri pointed at Ray’s beer mug. “Slow down.” Ray caught a whiff of cologne and turned around. The kid had a fighter’s face. His nose was off-center, and a scar ran horizontally along his left cheekbone. He was wiry and built for speed. “I’ll flag her down.” Ray held up his empty shot glass. “But it’ll cost you.” Sheri appeared, and the kid ordered a round for his friends who had commandeered the table in front of the big screen TV. “And get your friend here a shot of Crown.” He slapped Ray on the back. “Thanks, man.” Talking to this punk could set off the fireworks in Ray’s head. It had been a long time, and he didn’t need that kind of trouble. No one did. Ray folded his hands. He counted to ten in his head—a trick he’d picked up in an anger management class, another court order the judge had thrown at him. He knocked back the shot. The whisky worked its magic, numbing the hard-wired parts of his brain. With it came regret. The kind that left his insides itchy and led to more whiskey. It was pathetic, this cycle he’d been rolling around in like a pig in shit for most of his life, but he didn’t know how to stop it. That was the plain truth. Tomorrow morning, sometime before he popped open his first beer, he’d try to talk himself out of it. Try to negotiate with the bastard who lived inside him. The guy he’d become after that last shot. It wasn’t Sheri’s fault. She’d pour him drinks until she was forced to take his keys if it came to that. Ray watched her full, round breasts bob up and down as her hips swung side to side. Something akin to youth stirred inside him. Sheri caught him staring and rolled her eyes. She could still make him blush. Sheri knew his story, at least part of it—the whole town did. If he’d just left after high school, things would have turned out differently. Maybe. Ray and his mom had left the apartment above his grandparents’ house and moved to Cedarville in the fall of 1965 after his old man died. Ray was six and started first grade the following day with a sea of rowdy kids. A week later, a package arrived. Inside was a brand-new, leatherbound 1964 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia Volume 1 (A). A note was taped to the front cover of the book. Hey Kid, Your grandma says the whole world is inside these books. Hope you learn a lot. Be good. Grandpa Lou Over the next year, he received the whole set of encyclopedias. Ray marveled at the countless photos, drawings, and diagrams. He was transported to faraway places and respected the important people he read about. His teachers said he had a photographic memory. He’d learn much later that it only pertained to the things he read. The stuff that happened to him, the important things, lived inside him like shadows. By junior high, Ray was the smartest kid in school. His encyclopedic knowledge was something folks talked about at the grocery store and Fred’s Barber Shop. He had no trouble accessing the thousands of pages of information when it came to answering questions on tests. Name the seven continents . They were located on page 801 in Volume 4 (Ci to CZ) . Name the capitals of all fifty states . A chart titled “Facts in Brief about the States of the Union,” including state birds and state flowers, was on pages 52-55 in Volume 19 (U-V) . Ray had been a local superstar by his junior year in high school, the same year the varsity football and basketball teams were in the state semi-finals. It didn’t matter. All attention was on Ray, "the Whiz Kid"—a nickname dubbed by a local newspaper reporter. It was the seventies. Middle-class suburban sprawl was devouring Midwest farmland with planned subdivisions and strip malls. Cedarville ended at the tracks. On the other side was Glenwood with its new movie theater and indoor community pool. In contrast, Cedarville was a workingman’s town still dependent on railroad jobs and contract work for the Oldsmobile plant in Michigan, a town quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. The people of Cedarville needed a local hero, and by all accounts, Ray fit the bill. He was a tall, good-looking kid who was smarter than any of those yahoos over in Glenwood. Ray’s mother was a sickly, nervous woman who feared the intrusion of her son’s celebrity into her otherwise private life. Ray was on his own when it came to teachers, reporters, and college recruiters. He didn’t know what to make of all the attention. Girls threw themselves at him. He was voted prom king, class president, and grand marshal for the local Fourth of July parade, which his mom did not attend, complaining of a migraine. It all began to unravel with his junior year standardized test results. Mrs. Dombrowski, the high school guidance counselor, had scheduled an appointment to meet with Ray and his mom. Ray showed up alone. He was surprised to see the principal and his calculus teacher at the meeting. Ray’s scores were impressive, but he had failed miserably on the essay portion of the exam. What happened? Mrs. Dombrowski asked. Ray saw the questions in his head: Discuss The Great Gatsby as it relates to American culture today. Which country was most affected by World War II and why? Who was the most influential world leader of the nineteenth century? Discuss how his leadership has changed the course of history. He remembered closing his eyes, looking for pages that would help him, but the words and phrases muddled together in a thick alphabet soup. It was like someone had gathered up the books in his head and walked off with them. His calculus teacher sat sizing up Ray as though the two had never met. The principal had written a letter on behalf of Ray to Columbia University’s admissions board. He wanted answers, but Ray didn’t have any. Mrs. Dombrowski was a kind woman with meaty arms and short, red hair. She had stood in as Ray’s surrogate mother when it came to his future. Sitting in her office, he felt as though he had failed her; that he had failed the whole town. Ray didn’t share what he saw in his head. The questions on the exam required that he think for himself. He had never been good at that. He finally asked to be dismissed. Mrs. Dombrowski’s pity bored holes in what little confidence he possessed. The last semester of high school was agonizing. No one knew of his meeting with Mrs. Dombrowski, but then there was the incident in history class. His teacher, during a discussion on famous United States monuments, asked Ray how tall the Statue of Liberty stood from the base to the top of her flame. Ray accessed Volume 17 (S) from the memory bank in his head, which felt disconnected from the rest of him, and found very little. He glanced around the room, a collective pride radiating off his friends as they waited for his response. “I don’t know,” Ray stammered. He found the problem once he got home. The information was in Volume 12 (L) under “Liberty Statue of”, but it was too late. Ray felt like an impostor, and kids, like dogs, sensed it. The attention and admiration faded just like it did for those pretty girls he’d slept with. After graduation, he took a job on the railroad as a gandy dancer, until he was promoted to switchman after memorizing a manual he found in the breakroom. That ended when he got into a bar fight with his boss. Ray glanced at the Budweiser clock. Fifteen minutes to go, and these boys would head across the street. For years, he had depended on locals to buy him a beer and bump after answering trivia questions. “Hey, Ray. Who was the twelfth president of this great nation?” some old codger would shout out. A two-page photo spread of the Presidents of the United States was in Volume 15 (P). “Zachary Taylor was the President from 1849 to 1850.” Taylor was also on page 48 in Volume 18 (T). Ray had looked him up after learning he’d only served a year as President. “He died suddenly on July 9, 1850. He’s buried in a family cemetery near Louisville, Kentucky.” “Buy that man a beer,” someone else would holler. Ray accepted the challenges with pride and secretly referred to his good fortune as The Pavlovian Tavern Experiment. Answer a question and get a free drink. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States after Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. Remarkably, President Johnson was in the 1964 publication of The World Book Encyclopedia . A lot had happened since then. Ray couldn’t remember the last time someone asked him a question. Sheri looked tired. They weren’t kids anymore. Their forty-year class reunion was coming up, and what did he have to show for it? “Hey, sweetie,” Ray lifted his glass, “when you get a minute.” Sheri shook her head and turned to help the kid who was back for a third time. Ray swayed a bit when he stood. The kid laughed, and the fireworks lit up inside Ray’s head. He sat back down, clasped his hands together, and started counting to ten—this time out loud. Sheri came out from behind the bar. Ray rested his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. She shook it off and grabbed the kid’s arm. “You and your buddies need to leave.” Another fight could land Ray in county jail. But if the kid threw the first punch, Ray would flatten him. The kid read Ray’s mind and nodded. “Settle your tab and get out of here,” Ray said. The kid rummaged through a wad of cash, handed Sheri a fifty, and disappeared through the side door. Sheri turned around and snatched Ray’s truck keys off the bar. “Why do you have to act like that?” Ray knew the answer to that question, and it had nothing to do with those damn encyclopedias or the kid. He reached for the keys. Sheri tossed them in her tip jar and pointed at the door. “You’re cut off.” Ray grabbed his jacket from the barstool and fumbled with the buttons. Sheri stood with her arms crossed. “I liked you better sober,” she said. Ray looked up from the buttons. He’d seen that expression before. Sheri had sworn at him, threatened him, even thrown a beer mug at him once, but this was different. Like Mrs. Dombrowski, Sheri pitied him. Whatever screwed-up connection and history they shared, it was over. He searched his head for something to say. Sheri didn’t wait. “Go home, Ray.” Ray had learned a few things during his sobriety. The dull ache of arthritis in his joints and the sharp pains left behind in his bones from long-forgotten fights had made him feel alive, like his being on this planet accounted for something. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He stepped out into the moonless night, where the cold air blew out the fireworks. Like Russian nesting dolls, there was the story inside the story. The one no one knew about except his mom, but she’d been gone three years. The cancer had eaten her organs like a parasite. He had prayed on her deathbed that she would take The Nightmare with her. God had other plans, so he was stuck with it. He walked along the tracks, pulling the collar of his jacket up to cover his neck against the cold. He navigated the railroad ties on his way to his apartment as his thoughts stepped aside, making room for the parade of red and white Old Milwaukee pull top cans. He rubbed his eyes. The image remained like it always did. He felt sweat pool at the base of his spine despite the cold. Whether sleeping or drunk, like he was now, there was muscle memory to The Nightmare, and he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets to steady the shaking. “Four hundred seventy-eight! Four hundred seventy-nine!” he shouted, into the black night. Counting railroad ties did nothing to dampen the memory. For Christ’s sake. Ray was only six, a little boy, when his dad tossed a can of Old Milwaukee to him. “Drink up, kid,” he said. Ray held the cold can between his legs and counted eleven dead soldiers at his dad’s feet and three on the coffee table, resting on their sides. Ray’s mom was in the kitchen pulling chicken pot pies out of the oven. She swore under her breath. Something about burning her hand to feed that good-for-nothing S.O.B. Ray looked up from the can of beer he still hadn’t opened. His dad was slouched over in the plaid lounge chair, passed out. Ray didn’t dare move. His grandparents owned the bungalow and lived downstairs. They had a window air-conditioner in the living room. Ray’s dad said it was a waste of hard-earned money. The heat was stifling. The cedar paneling oozed a spicy aroma that got on your clothes. Ray wanted to go outside. His best friend, Benny, lived next door. They had made plans to catch bullfrogs in the creek that ran through their backyards after supper. His mom dropped something in the sink, and Ray’s dad pulled himself upright in the chair. The muscles in his arms strained against his T-shirt as he snatched a beer from the metal cooler he took everywhere. “I said drink up.” He held the can like a fastball and eyed Ray as home plate. Ray fumbled with the pull top. The beer was sour. He held out the can to examine. He didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. His dad leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes wide open now, he studied Ray. “Like this, son.” Ray watched his dad take a long draw. Ray thought about going to the kitchen to be with his mom, but he knew his dad’s moods like he did the predictable bird that poked its head out of the little door of the cuckoo clock above the sofa. Ray raised the can to his mouth like his dad had and drank until a warm fuzz coated his belly. His dad winked, finished off his beer, and crushed the can under his work boot. “That’s my boy.” “Dinner’s ready,” his mom called out from someplace above Ray’s head. “Come on, son. Food is on the table,” his dad said. Ray pushed himself up from the sofa. Without anything to grab onto, he reached for his dad. “That’s it, little man. I gotcha.” In the cramped hallway between the living room and kitchen, Ray leaned against the maple door leading down the steep stairs to the garage. His mom stood in the sunlit kitchen wearing a yellow dress and holding a pot of green beans. Ray kept a hand on the wall to steady himself as he shuffled toward the yellow dress. “Ray, what’s wrong?” The pot banged on the red Formica tabletop. Ray covered his ears. His mom bent down and, with gentle fingers, pried open his eyelids. “My God, Lloyd, what did you do to him?” “I feel funny,” Ray said. She kissed Ray’s forehead. “Go to your room.” His dad stood next to the sink, a wild look in his eyes. Ray seized his mom’s hand. A sharp smack rang off the kitchen cabinets. Ray ducked. His mom tumbled backwards into the counter next to the stove, cupping a hand over her mouth. His dad loomed over her with fists raised. “Run!” his mom hollered. Ray bolted to the door. Yanking it open, he contemplated the steep stairwell. Ray’s dad staggered toward him. The slap to the back of Ray’s head nearly sent him headfirst down the stairs and registered through the drunken fog as danger. Ray side-stepped, leaving his dad standing where he had just been. Ray’s thoughts sloshed around as though submerged in warm water. “Mom?” he called out. “Shut up, kid.” The crack to his cheek burned. Ray squared his shoulders against a second blow. His mom appeared from the kitchen with a swollen lip. Blotches of bright red smeared her yellow dress. Blood , he thought. Mom’s blood . Ray pushed his dad out of the way and ran toward her. Groans and thuds came from the stairwell, filling the apartment and stopping Ray in his tracks. Slowly, his mom made her way to the stairs, passing by Ray as though avoiding a chair that stood in her way. Ray turned. His mother stood at the top of the stairs; her mouth opened to scream but nothing came out. “Mommy?” Ray scrambled to her side, grabbing her hand to steady himself at the door’s threshold. His dad lay crumpled against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Ray waited for him to move, to start yelling. Ray buried his face in the folds of his mother’s dress. “I’m sorry, Mommy.” “It was an accident, son,” his mother said. Ray ran to his bedroom. Sitting on his bed, he saw his mother slam the door to the stairs and retreat to the kitchen. The apartment was quiet. He felt alone. When the police arrived, Ray’s mom came to his room. “Stay put,” she said and closed the door behind her. Ray imagined being dragged from the apartment and going to jail, a place where bad people were sent and never heard from again. Ray scurried under the bed. He heard voices in the living room and outside the house. When the officers left, his mother went to her room. She never looked Ray in the eyes again. After all these years, the sick feeling of paying for your sins still whittled away at him. Eight hundred forty-two, eight hundred forty-three railroad ties. Counting eight hundred fifty-one, Ray turned left. O’Sullivan also owned the old Union Pacific rooming house. The city completed an inspection after numerous complaints about a clogged toilet on the second floor and a roach-infested kitchen on the first. The building was a state historic site. O’Sullivan was forced to bring the building up to code. Ray did maintenance work and harassed crappy tenants until they left in exchange for a rent-free studio apartment on the second floor. Ray walked up the back stairs to the landing and cursed his frozen fingers as he worked the key into the lock. The apartment was freezing. He turned on the space heater, grabbed a six-pack from the fridge, and plunked down on the sofa, one of a handful of things he took from his mom’s apartment after she died. The television shorted out during a thunderstorm the previous spring. Ray sat in the yellow glow of the railyard lights. A bookshelf he’d fashioned out of scrap wood and cinderblocks held his encyclopedia collection. All that encyclopedic knowledge didn’t do him squat. The books containing the world stage before 1964 were still in his head. The information was outdated, and much of it useless. If he were being honest, most everyone he knew would agree that Ray and those books had a lot in common. He sucked down an Old Milwaukee and opened another. He closed his eyes. The memories following his dad’s death appeared in disjointed snippets. His grandparents had been at the VFW playing bingo and got home late. His grandma’s shrills came up through the vents, making Ray tremble. There was the funeral where Ray was forced to wear a wool suit that pinched under his armpits and caused a rash that itched like crazy in the heat. The ham dinner afterwards was held at Dick’s Dockside Tavern. Lots of strangers were there. His mom’s parents showed up. Ray had never met them before. They were rich. His grandpa Lou had called them fancy , like it was a bad word. Sometime after the funeral, he and his mom packed up the apartment in boxes they picked up at Dean’s Supermarket. Cedarville was across the river, where Ray’s mom found a job as a secretary at Linden Quarry. During it all, his mom seemed to shrink before his eyes until Ray all but replaced his dad as the man of the house. His grandpa Lou had said as much when he dropped Ray and his mom off at their new apartment. “You take care of your mom. You hear me.” Ray had thought about tossing the encyclopedias. They were the last vestige of his past that he’d sever if he could. But among the memories, a red-hot ember still glowed, illuminating the truth. He kicked the coffee table. His mother’s voice cut through the haze. “It was an accident, son.” It was no accident. Ray still sensed the heat radiating off his dad’s sweat-soaked T-shirt on the palms of his hands. He’d pushed with all his might and shuddered in amazement as his dad clawed at the air like a mighty bear to steady himself. Ray crushed an empty beer can in his fist and opened another. The images of his dad’s broken body were hazy, but the grunts and moans coming from the stairwell still sucker-punched him in the gut. His dad appeared before him across the room in the soiled plaid lounge chair from his grandparents’ apartment—the left side of his face mangled; the flesh peeled back, exposing bone. A thick smear of crimson stained his white T-shirt. Those same wild eyes Ray remembered from that night in the kitchen, judging him. Ray threw an empty can at the chair. “Leave me alone, old man.” Ray stumbled to the encyclopedias and reached for Volume 8 (G) . The book flopped open to page 166, the page he’d referenced countless times, hoping his memory had failed him. He found the word that struck his nerves like a match. GHOST is believed by some people to be the unhappy and often harmful spirit of a dead person . Ray fell to his knees. With eyes closed, he lifted his head and waited for a sign, a message—anything to release him from The Nightmare. Ray sat back on his heels and retrieved the AA chip from his pocket. All those meetings, five times a week for the first three months, hadn’t changed a thing. He managed to talk about the fight and the court order. He even admitted to being an alcoholic. But The Nightmare he’d take to his grave. The heater had done its job, and the warmth burrowed under his flannel shirt against his skin. He opened his eyes. The chair was empty. For a moment, Ray felt worthy like great men do when there is no one else to answer to. But he knew the truth. Some night soon, his dad would return. Ray grasped the chip and folded his hands in prayer. The World Book Encyclopedia’s definition of God was in the same book on page 229. The Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, All Knowing, All Powerful, Infinite, and Ever Present . Maybe so. But Ray, for all his cursing and pleading for forgiveness, had never heard from Him. Like a thunderbolt, the cheap, fluorescent tube above his head exploded, raining down shards of soda-lime glass like sand. Ray didn’t see it that way. Instead, the wings of fallen angels brushed against his skin in the darkness. Clutching the AA chip, he crawled on his hands and knees to the cordless phone on the floor next to the sofa and called his sponsor. “I’m out of coffee,” he said. The gruff voice on the other end, a lifeline Ray had batted away too many times to count, chuckled. “No problem, kid. I just made a fresh pot. Can’t sleep for shit anymore. I’ll be there in twenty.” Ray sat in the dark and waited. Sometimes a haunting childhood can cause us to shapeshift into someone we never imagined. Ray, a middle-aged drunk, finally finds a path to redemption on a cold and snowy night in "The Whiz Kid." 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 MAMA'S HANDS Willy Palomo scrub toilets until you can see your face as you piss, until her hugs smell only of rubber & bleach. Her knuckles are rougher than my father’s, tougher than anything behind a dumpster with Timberlands and a metal bat. At nine years old, the sound of her car leaving the garage would wake me up in the morning. Her shift ended at midnight, so at bedtime, I would take out all my toys and wait for her and play with dinosaurs on the couch. But the morning would come with the crank of her engine, again. I’m sorry, Mama , I’d blink, knotting myself deeper into my sheets, but I couldn’t breathe & keep my eyes open at the same time. I’m sorry , I’d stomp, crushing snails after school, I didn’t love you enough to stay awake . When night came again, I’d yawn, pull out my triceratops, and vow to see her before bed. I thought I would never make it. Then one night, the door broke open like a promise, the light behind her head darkening her face as she lifted me numb from the sofa. I twitched, maybe managed a smile, as her hand stroked the left side of my face—rough. Published in Crab Orchard Review . The literal breakthrough in the poem is a door opening and a pouring forth of light, one that also creates a chiaroscuro "darkening her face" in the frame of a promise broken open. Previous WILLY PALOMO (he/they/she) is the author of Mercury in Reggaetón , winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize, and Wake the Others (Editorial Kalina/Glass Spider Publishing, 2023), a winner of a Foreword Prize in Poetry and an International Latino Book Award honorable mention in Bilingual Poetry. A veteran of the Salt Lake City poetry slam scene, his fiction, essays, poetry, translations, and songs can be found across print and web pages, including the Best New Poets 2018 , Latino Rebels , The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States , and more. \He has taught classes on literature, rap, and creative writing in universities, juvenile detention centers, high schools, and community centers. He is the son of two refugees from El Salvador. www.palomopoemas.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue IMAGINED SCENES Mary Behan Ever since she read about it, riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok had been on Jennifer Fowler’s bucket list. She was fascinated by train travel, and no other rail journey promised such a bigger-than-life experience, chugging across that vast expanse of Asia, where a single color dominated the world map. She imagined a few days in Moscow to buy necessities for the ten-day trip, a final check of her paperwork, and then that electric moment as the train moved slowly out of the station, gaining speed through endless grey suburbs, and finally bursting free into a landscape that stretched for thousands of miles to the Sea of Japan. In her mind’s eye each scene along the way had its own vivid color, smell, and sound. Endless forests and snow-covered steppes punctuated by remote train stations; the curious faces of Russian farmers pausing to stare at the speeding behemoth; the lurching carriage with a samovar steaming quietly in the corner; the smell of sweat and damp wool and urine and garlicky sausages. Excuses came and went. At first it was money—never enough—but as her career progressed, time became the limiting resource. Her Chicago law office was small, and if she took more than two weeks of vacation, someone else would have to attend to her clients. Colleagues were always willing to pick up the slack for a wedding or an illness, but for anything else, they tended to be less generous. And so the Great Railway Bazaar scenes faded gradually as the years went by. This had been a particularly challenging winter for Jennifer. One of the attorneys in her office had slipped on the icy sidewalk early in December and broken both wrists, leaving her unable to work. Much of her caseload had fallen to Jennifer, who had little choice but to work fourteen-hour days, dragging herself home each evening through the grinding cold of a Chicago winter. By the time her colleague returned to the office in mid-February, Jennifer longed for a break from the relentless routine. That afternoon, as her client’s voice continued to drone on in the telephone receiver, she allowed her mind to drift. This was the third phone call with this man in as many days. He was a needy man, she thought; someone who liked the sound of his own voice and didn’t seem to care that every minute of her time came with a price. Absentmindedly, she scrolled through her e-mails. Pausing as one caught her eye, she double-clicked on the link that opened to a brochure for a conference in New Orleans the following month. The topic was only tangentially related to her area of expertise, but it piqued her interest. Her gaze drifted towards the window again. Yesterday’s snow was already melting, merging with the gray of the sidewalks. In the distance the L-train wound its way between buildings, looking for all the world like a model railroad. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of those two images in her brain, but by the end of the phone call she had made a decision. She would go to the conference in New Orleans—by train. * * * The tiny sleeper compartment would have been cramped with two people, but as she was travelling alone, it felt spacious. Two comfortable seats faced each other in front of a large picture window, beneath which hung a folding table. The porter who showed her to her roomette had stowed her suitcase deftly in a corner of the compartment, assuring her that he would take it out later when he prepared the cabin for the night. “My name is Joseph, Ma’am. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. You can press that buzzer or just walk towards the back of the train. You’ll find me for sure.” His broad, toothy smile left her feeling safe. Remembering those erstwhile Trans-Siberian dreams, she had brought a bottle of wine, and as soon as Joseph closed the compartment door, she opened it and poured herself a generous glass. The train lurched briefly, prompting her to grab both glass and bottle, but then it relapsed into a steady movement as it trundled out of Union Station into the Chicago suburbs. A tiny spark of excitement rippled through her. Her desk was clear for the next few days and nobody expected to hear from her. She was free. It was the absence of movement that woke her in the middle of the night. Drawing aside the curtain, harsh lights illuminated a railway yard, and for a moment she wondered whether something had happened. A derailment on the tracks ahead perhaps, or something more ominous? The app on her smartphone showed the train in Memphis, Tennessee, close to the Mississippi River. She listened for any sounds of alarm but the corridor was silent, so she went back to sleep, sliding down between crisp, white sheets and pulling the woolen blanket up to her chin. The next time she woke it was daylight and the view outside had changed dramatically. This was the hidden America—hamlets where trains no longer stopped, settlements that shouted poverty and abandonment. The train moved slowly through this blighted landscape, allowing her to imagine how her life might have been had she grown up here. A dilapidated shack, its wide porch cluttered with sagging chairs, a washing machine, and a stack of empty beer crates was a chastening reminder that not everyone had a chance to live the American Dream. Joseph helped her with her suitcase as she alighted from the train at the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans. She thanked him sincerely, feeling a momentary pang of apprehension at the prospect of leaving his care. She reminded herself that she wasn’t stepping off into a remote Russian city but, rather, a familiar American one. She was a successful lawyer in her mid-thirties, about to attend a conference where she would be respected, if not admired. She straightened her shoulders and walked out of the station into the mid-afternoon sunshine. The unaccustomed feeling of warm air on her skin made her smile. She decided to walk the eight blocks to the boutique hotel in the Warehouse District where she had made a reservation. Signs of post-Katrina recovery were everywhere, although little seemed to have been achieved in the three years since the hurricane. By comparison with Chicago the city felt hostile, and she walked briskly, her roller bag rattling on the uneven pavement. That evening she had an early meal at one of the more exclusive restaurants in the city. It was the sort of place that normally required a reservation, but by going early she hoped they would seat her. She dressed carefully for the occasion, and as she expected, the maître d’hôtel scrutinized her before seating her in a quiet corner of his dining room. Leaving a little over an hour later, she paused at a street corner to watch a scene playing out that could easily have been in a Hollywood movie. Two police cruisers had pulled up behind a battered-looking sedan, their lights flashing. The occupants of the car—two young black men—got out slowly and stood beside their car, waiting. Four white police officers emerged from the cruisers, their bulky gear making the process slow and awkward. One of them approached the two men; the other three stood slightly at a distance, their hands on their guns. The tension was palpable. Jennifer watched in fascination, waiting for someone to make a move—a wrong move. She didn’t notice the woman behind her and was startled when a voice spoke quietly. “Perhaps we should watch from a little farther away. It might be safer. I think we’re in the line of fire here.” Jennifer turned to see a tall, elegantly-dressed woman around her own age with vivid blue eyes and short blond hair parted to the side and slicked down, giving her a vaguely masculine appearance. She was very beautiful. “Maybe you’re right,” Jennifer responded, giving the woman a warm smile. It was true. A stray bullet could easily hit either of them or any of the bystanders who had also stopped. The woman touched her arm gently and led her across the street to a safer vantage point. For the next fifteen minutes they watched the scene play out, exchanging comments as to what might be going on and speculating as to how it might resolve. Suddenly, as if on cue, all six men got into their cars and drove away, the cruisers turning left and the sedan continuing on straight past the two women. The crowd of onlookers began to disperse, but the two women lingered and continued their conversation, which by now had progressed to the rehabilitation efforts that were being undertaken in the Warehouse District. Jennifer was about to say goodbye when the woman said, “I have an apartment just around the corner. Would you like to come up for a glass of wine? We have a lovely rooftop garden; you can see the boats on the river.” She tilted her head to one side and looked inquiringly at Jennifer, the side of her mouth turning up slightly with the hint of a smile. There was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself earlier. Veva Kiuru.” She extended her hand and Jennifer shook it, offering her own name in exchange. The name sounds vaguely Polish, Jennifer thought, yet this woman didn’t remind her of any of the Poles she knew in Chicago. Normally she would have refused an invitation like this, claiming an early morning meeting or some such excuse. But to her surprise, she found herself agreeing. Something about Veva intrigued her, and the prospect of doing something totally out of character was exciting. Besides, she reasoned, it was still relatively early in the evening and while her hotel room was charming, it offered little besides a large TV. Five minutes later they arrived at a four-story red brick building that, from its outward appearance, had once been a warehouse. “My husband bought the apartment soon after Katrina,” Veva said as she punched in a code on the panel beside a pair of heavy, wooden doors. “Nobody wanted to come downtown in those days, so it was a bargain. We live across the lake—Lake Pontchartrain—but this place is convenient when we go to concerts.” Any sense that the building had once been a factory disappeared as the doors swung open and automatically closed behind them. After the busy street noise, the silence was striking. A faint perfume of some sweet-smelling flower, the name of which escaped Jennifer, hung in the air. The spacious, dimly-lit foyer ended at a marble staircase that angled upwards into shadow. “You don’t mind if we take the stairs, do you?” Veva asked. “There’s an elevator but I prefer the exercise.” The apartment was on the top floor of the building and consisted of a spacious, high-ceilinged loft with a row of tall windows that spanned the whole length of one wall. Facing the windows was a galley kitchen, separated from the room by an island at which stood two high stools. A hallway led off the room, presumably to the bedroom and bathroom, Jennifer thought. Decorated in a minimalist style, the floors were of recycled lumber sanded to reveal the dark wood grain. An L-shaped sofa dominated the center of the room, strewn with cushions in muted colors. In the angle of the sofa stood a large glass coffee table, empty except for a pair of silver and bronze stirrups with an intricate Arabic design carved into their sides. Beside them lay a shield and sword, both equally stunning. An image of Genghis Khan flashed into Jennifer’s mind, seated astride his horse and looking fierce and magnificent. As she followed Veva towards the kitchen, she ran her fingers delicately over a slab of cream-colored wood supported by a complex arrangement of stainless-steel cables and posts that looked to be a writing desk of sorts. It felt like silk, the surface hardly registering on her fingertips. Pausing, she stared at the object on the desk, which she recognized as a Japanese suzuri, the ink stone nestled into an intricately carved dragon whose eyes were fixed upon a golden egg. Beside the suzuri lay a calligraphy brush. She looked over at Veva, who was watching her. “It’s very beautiful,” Jennifer said, gesturing towards the room. “I like beautiful things,” came the response. Jennifer watched as Veva reached upward to slide two wine glasses from the rack hanging above the island. The movement was fluid and practiced and despite her own petite frame, she felt awkward by comparison. “Your name is very unusual. Is it Polish?” Jennifer asked. “Finnish.” “What do you do…for work I mean?” “I work for the government,” came the reply, but something in Veva’s tone seemed to discourage further inquiry. “And you?” “I’m a lawyer. We do mostly health care stuff…representing hospitals and clinics. The laws around health care are changing all the time.” Veva nodded. “You drink white?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. “I have red if you prefer.” “White would be lovely.” She took out a bottle of wine, glanced at it, and uncorked it with practiced efficiency. “It’s a New Zealand wine and a good one. I promise.” Her blue eyes lingered on Jennifer for an extra few seconds. Then, with glasses and bottle in hand, she walked towards the hall. “Follow me,” she said without looking back and disappeared into a small passageway from which a spiral staircase led upward. The rooftop garden was a surprise. Each of the apartments in the building had its own private space, separated from neighbors by tall, wicker partitions. On opposite sides of Veva’s garden, a steel and glass wall allowed for an uninterrupted view of the New Orleans skyline. A trellis festooned with lush greenery covered much of the tiny space, shading a table and two chairs. Veva poured a generous measure into the glasses and offered one to Jennifer. She raised her own glass. “To safety,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly. For the next two hours they talked. Veva was a good listener, prompting the conversation with thoughtful questions, but offering little information about herself. Something about the rooftop—a sense of removal from the world—allowed Jennifer to open up in ways she never had before. Neither confessional nor therapy session, it felt more like a conversation with her inner self. She could hear the disappointment in her own voice as she talked about her divorce seven years earlier and the few men she had dated since. All the while Veva’s intense blue eyes held her attention, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she found herself yearning to elicit that unique smile. The temperature had dropped slightly and the wine bottle was empty. Veva stood up, stretched her arms above her head, and arched her back. She walked to the rail and looked towards the river. Silhouetted against the darkening skyline, Jennifer thought she looked magnificent, like a character out of an Avengers movie—feline, predatory, powerful. “Come join me,” Veva said, turning around to look at Jennifer. Although it was said softly, it was a command not a request. Standing side by side at the railing they stared into the distance, neither speaking. Then Veva turned towards her and gently stroked her face. The caress carried a question and at the same time an expectation. Jennifer held her breath, not certain whether she wanted the scene to progress. But her body had already decided. A warm ache made its way through her, bringing a flush to her face. Then Veva kissed her. Her tongue explored Jennifer’s mouth, withdrawing to linger over her lips, then plunging greedily again and again. Jennifer could taste the wine on Veva’s breath. She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw the scene unfolding in slow motion, like a drop of water creating gently expanding waves. She gasped as every cell in her body ached for this sublime feeling to go on forever. Veva’s mouth was still on hers, her arm around her neck, holding her in a tight embrace. Then she pulled away, took Jennifer’s hand in hers, and led her towards the stairs. At the bottom of the spiral staircase, Veva turned to her. She was smiling. “Let me blindfold you.” Her eyes were bright, her mouth slightly open as if expecting Jennifer to refuse. But there was no protest. She slid the silk scarf from around her neck and held it out in her two hands, like an offering. Jennifer took a deep breath and accepted, raising the scarf towards her face. Veva helped her tie the knot and whispered in her ear, “Trust me.” Jennifer could feel the warm breath followed by the tip of a tongue deftly probing her ear. A thrill of pleasure erupted in her core. There was a gentle pressure on her back pushing her forward, and instinctively she held her hands out in front of her. A finger caressed her outstretched palm, threading its way to her wrist and closing around it like a manacle. She felt a slight pull and allowed herself to be drawn into the bedroom. Like Alice falling down a rabbit hole she had no sense of what might happen next, but she was willing to give herself up entirely to whatever might unfold. * * * She knew Veva was gone as soon as she woke the following morning. It wasn’t just the absence of sound; it was as if someone had sucked all the life out of the apartment. For a few minutes Jennifer lay there thinking about the previous evening. Her hand moved toward her center, which was still wet and slightly bruised. She rolled over on her belly, inhaling Veva’s scent from the smooth sheet. Every fiber of her body craved the exquisite pleasure she had experienced. This is what jonesing for drugs must be like, she thought—a gnawing pain that begged to be satisfied. But there would be no antidote to ease her back into her previous life. She pushed the thought aside and got out of bed. In the living room, propped up against a tall glass of water, was a card-sized piece of cream-colored paper. The letter ‘V’ had been inscribed on it with a perfect brush stroke of black ink. She turned the card over but it was blank. Jennifer made a final tour of the apartment, trying to sear every detail of the space into her mind. She reached out to touch the suzuri, tracing the dragon from tail to head, her fingers lingering on the golden egg. The calligraphy brush lay beside it, still slightly damp. She took the card and slid it carefully into her purse. Then, with a feeling of immense loss, she left, closing the door decisively behind her. The next day was filled with people and presentations, welcome distractions that served to keep a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts at bay. Up to now, all of her sexual encounters had been heterosexual, and as Jennifer searched through scenes from her past, nowhere had she ever felt attracted to a woman. The evening with Veva had been more pleasurable than anything she had ever experienced. Although sex with her husband was satisfying, it had been unimaginative. None of the men she had slept with since her divorce had made her feel the way she had with Veva, and she wondered if it would change her life in any way. But this was something she didn’t want to dwell on, at least not yet. On the second evening of the conference, Jennifer arranged to have dinner with a friend from her law school days who was also attending the meeting. They hadn’t seen each other since before her divorce and spent an enjoyable couple of hours catching up. After dinner, he offered to walk her back to her hotel and she agreed, steering him on a circuitous route through the Warehouse District with the excuse of showing him the architecture. As they walked past Veva’s apartment building, Jennifer stole a glance upward, but the windows were unlit. On the final evening there was a cocktail party for the two hundred attendees in the ballroom of the conference hotel. Waiters carrying trays of canapés and glasses of wine wove their way expertly among the crowd. Jennifer stood at a tall bar table with a group of colleagues, not quite engaged with their conversation. Looking around the room at some of the now-familiar faces, her heart missed a beat. Staring at her from across the ballroom was Veva, a tiny smile lurking in the corner of her mouth. Their eyes locked for several seconds until the crowd closed in and Jennifer lost sight of her. She abruptly excused herself and rushed to the spot where she had last seen Veva, but she had disappeared. The following morning Jennifer took an early flight back to Chicago and by mid-afternoon was seated at her desk. Looking out her office window later that afternoon as the light was beginning to fade, she watched as the L-train threaded its way through the commercial buildings. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to remember, and as the scenes unfurled like flowers, a world of possibilities began to emerge. "Imagined Scenes" was previously published as "Scenes in a Movie" in my collection of short stories, Kernels . In this story, the breakthrough is an awakening as a young lawyer from Chicago has her first non-binary sexual experience with a woman she meets in New Orleans. Previous MARY BEHAN was formerly a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now writes fiction, memoir, and short stories. Her books, published by Laurence Gate Press, include Abbey Girls , a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland; A Measured Thread set in Wisconsin and Ireland, which was named a Top 100 Indie Book, a finalist in the Page Turner Awards, and an eLit medal winner; Kernels , a collection of short stories; and Finding Isobel , a companion to her first novel, was published in 2024 and awarded a gold medal for best adult fiction e-book by the Independent Publishers (IPPI), a silver medal in women’s fiction from Readers Favorite, and Outstanding Literary Fiction Winner in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. mvbehan.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue ANGEL'S DINER Stephen Wunderli It is the hitching season, or so the old timers used to call it. A time to hitch up all dogged-out farm equipment in the fields and drag it into the barn for repairs. Snow will fall and moving anything abused through the summer into the barn where it can be repaired is essential. Field work slows. Coffee flows. God waits somewhere above the names carved in stone over the mine entrance to comfort the sons of Greeks who died in the great tunnel collapse. They will return. SAM Sam called Darius and told him to be at Angel’s Diner a few minutes early. He had a favor to procure, and he didn’t want the rest of the boys to hear it. He pulled up under a rust-colored sky, shuffled through the slush, and slid into a booth with orange vinyl stretched painfully over benches. Darius was already there. It was six in the morning at a truck stop between two towns that serve petroleum trucks, umbilical gas lines pumping diesel into their bellies and entertaining locals with near disasters as the land whales shudder southbound tourists onto the shoulder of the highway when they pass. “Nicky is dying,” Sam told Darius, his winter-swollen hands folded in supplication around his coffee cup. “The doctors said some kind of cancer they have never seen around here.” “I’m sorry,” Darius said. “Can we pray?” Sam leaned his meaty face into Darius. “No need yet. Now about this favor. It’s complicated. can’t have Kelli hearing of it, not with the restraining order. She isn’t to come near either of us. If she gets wind, she could throw the gears off Nicky’s last days.” Darius sat back. His rounded shoulders, big as a steer, leaned forward, his black head mounted securely in the middle. “The kid is only nine years old. What does Kelli think?” “I don’t know,” Sam said with the kind of deep-seated contempt that puts up fences between neighbors. “She hasn’t been around since she had a go with you.” Sam paused and let his emotions die down, looking out at the diesel exhaust hanging in the air. He smelled of it. He always smelled of it. The three layers of flannel went the winter without a wash, the belly pulling his shoulders forward. “You know nothing happened,” Darius said, squinting into the hurt Sam was feeling. “It’s quite a thing to watch a life get away from you, isn’t it?” Sam asked. DARIUS An apparition was steaming on the window where Darius rested his forearm. His broad, black face flowed in folds down his neck, hiding the sinews that tightened when he talked, drawing his jaw back slightly into a nonthreatening position. He was a strong, good-looking man of good proportion except for the few extra pounds he carried about the middle. Trucks exiting the freeway threw waves of slush as they carved their way to the stop, miles of gray wash behind them and gray frags burrowed into fresh snow as if after an explosion. The dawn seemed stalled against the roiled fog; brackish and heavy, shouldering against the sun. Darius was rarely up for one of Sam’s favors. It seemed he was always the first to be asked and the last to get thanked. He pushed his hands out on the table in front of him in supplication. “You know that, right? That nothing happened between me and Kelli?” Sam looked away from Darius to watch Angel tabbing receipts, balancing plates of eggs and holstering the coffeepot in her apron tie. “Don’t matter one way or the other. I don’t want Kelli gobbing up the boy’s life now.” “She is the mother,” Darius said. “Don’t pick sides, big man. You know the woman can’t hold herself up, let alone steady the boy. What’s done is done, and what’s right is right.” Darius sat back, his big body taking up most of the bench built for men a hundred years ago who worked all day in the mines on a cup of coffee. He knew Sam was shaping the story about Kelli to his advantage, the way he always did. Pushing the truth of things. The bit of truth in a lie is what mattered to Sam. Darius had seen it before and he knew challenging Sam would only earn a smug “that’s your way of looking at it.” Silence. “Should I tell his baseball team,” Darius went on. “Do something special, make one of those blankets everybody can sign?” “No. He wants to see Bigfoot,” Sam said. “Judas, Bigfoot? That’s the boy’s dying wish?” “Let’s get to my favor before the other boys show up.” Darius leaned forward with the girth of his chest rested on the booth table. “Let’s have it then.” “Kelli can’t know about it,” Sam said, leaning over his coffee. “She’ll be digging at you looking for answers. Don’t pick up the phone.” Darius nodded. Kelli’s number had been scratched from his phone months earlier. They had been talking, way back when the war between Sam and Kelli began, with Darius as peacekeeper so Sam could stay on the road. It was a year after Nicky was born when Kelli unleashed her insides. Darius had witnessed the scrapes on Sam’s face the width of fingernails and the bashed-out headlights on his truck. More than once, he found Sam asleep in the café in the early morning. Kelli called Darius late at night with her long, breathless complaints when Sam tired of yelling into the torrents of Kelli’s accusations, but he never went over to comfort her in person, no matter how many dishes she broke on the floor for him to hear. SAM “It come on him in the hospital,” Sam started, his face sagging under the weight of the topic. His stubble was coarse enough to fray his flannel shirt. “He shows up for chemo once a week and has nothing to do but sit there and be quiet. So, he picked up a magazine that’s been in the waiting room for ten years and reads about some Bigfoot sighting. It was like a drug. It just got hold of him. It’s something you know a bit about, how you can’t control the next thing you’re gonna say or do.” Darius looked at Sam, his eyes tired, weakened by the weight of denial. He breathed out long. “And there’s a favor in this story?” “I’m coming to that. It takes some time. That’s why I asked you to come early.” Darius used his thick hand to prop up his face and give his neck a rest. Drops of moisture from snowflakes colliding with the big windowpane were spotting the outside gray and breaking up the fluorescent lights. “He spent a month in the library. He’s got newspapers laid out like treasure maps in his room,” Sam said, spreading his arms out wide like he was measuring a fish. “Course you can’t say nothing to a boy in that state, so I’m letting him piece it all out in his head.” “Sounds serious.” “Oh, it is.” Sam sat back and sucked in air like he was storing it for later. “It is.” The weight of losing his boy was suffocating him. It drained all reason and logic, pushing him into abstract unknowns he could not plumb or measure. A tanker pulled up to the side of the café, splattered with brown highway slush and wobbling to a stop. “There’s Jim,” Darius said. “Better get it out before he walks in here.” “Alright. So here it is. I need you to be Bigfoot.” Darius put his hands on the table like he was showing he had nothing to hide. “Me? Why not Jim?” Sam leaned forward. “Because you are a big Black man, and you owe me one.” “Judas, Sam.” “It’s the kid’s dying wish, Dee. God honest truth.” “You want me to be Bigfoot?” “You’re the best I got. Jim would blow the whole thing up, dance like a rodeo clown, or worse, holler something out in his real voice and my boy would be pulverized. Nicky is whip smart. He reads.” Jim eased in beside Darius and patted the middle of the table. Angel set a coffee cup down and filled it. “What’s got you fellas quiet this morning? School bus broke down again?” “No, not that,” Sam said. “Just a day like any other.” “Sam says I’m a big Black man,” Darius blurted out. Jim leaned back and eyed Darius. “Well, you don’t say. I never noticed until now. Damned if he ain’t right.” Darius chuckled and let the steam from the fresh coffee rise to his face. Sam tightened his lips until the wings of his mustache readied for takeoff. “He just wants a favor for his boy, that’s all,” Darius said. “How is Nicky?” Jim asked. “I know he’s sick.” “He’s dying,” said Sam. “But he still has some strength.” “Damn. I’m sorry about that. He up for a ride in the tanker? I could take him on a route?” “No,” Sam said. “He wants to see Bigfoot,” said Darius. “It’s his dying wish,” Sam added. “Don’t ask me why. I’m not good at this at all.” Jim looked at Darius, stared for a moment at the thick beard, the broad, dark face. “You know there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.” “There is now,” Darius offered resolutely. “There is now.” “You want to let the other boys in on it?” Jim asked. “No,” Sam answered. “A conspiracy ain’t a conspiracy if the whole town knows about it.” “Okay, let’s go then,” Jim said, standing up. “We can talk about it at the truck bay. I’ve got to wash the whale.” Darius raised his hands like he was calming a horse. “Nobody’s said yes to anything yet.” JIM Compressors sputtered on and off and mist hung in the air. The spray gun dripped. The sky was a cement gray. The boys leaned against the side of the sweating tanker, freshly sprayed down. Jim’s beard drained droplets onto the front of his T-shirt, into a void the flannel could not cross. “You’re right about the boy dying with a smile on his face. That would be my wish.” “Not here to talk about the dying part,” Sam said. He had not let himself go to that place where his boy lay in coffin sucking the life out of the world. Jim held up his hand to overrule the conversation. “Just saying that it’s hard to get a corpse to smile. Ask Winifred. She embalmed a hundred people in her life, and she’ll tell you it’s better if they come in with a natural smile.” “It’s why we’re here,” Sam said, not knowing where to put his hands. They were roughhewn and worn and he was trying to stow them somewhere without success. “The boy deserves the best sendoff I can give him. Something that keeps him smiling all the way to Heaven.” “You’d think seeing God would be enough,” Jim said. “No one asked you,” Sam snapped back. “The boy’s not even old enough to drink coffee but he’s old enough to know that Heaven is waiting for him.” “If I had a boy, I’d want to make sure he died happy and not be all tangled up in stuff that doesn’t matter.” “Like how?” Sam demanded. Jim stepped back from the tanker. Darius calmed the tension by offering to help. “Where do I fit in?” Sam tugged at his trucker jacket and drew a magazine page out of his pocket. He pressed it against the side of the tanker. “I stole this from his stash. This is what Bigfoot looks like.” Jim fished in his shirt pocket for his readers. The boys stared at the photo. “Where do we get the costume?” Jim asked. “No costume. It has to look real,” Sam insisted. “Nicky’s got a sharp eye. An ape suit won’t do it.” “You’re talking a Hollywood makeup job there,” Jim said. “The best this town has ever seen.” “The boy is worth it,” Darius said. “Damn cancer. We could get Debra over at the Kut and Kurl.” In the photo Bigfoot’s arms hung long, the hands flapping like a kid wearing his dad’s mittens. The head coned comically upward, and hair grew unnaturally over the kneecaps, something that would not happen in the wild to an animal who spent any time rooting around for grubs. “My hell, Sam. He’s way too clean. We can do better than this,” said Jim. “A beast in the wild would have briars and tagalongs on its fur.” “We have to make the best Bigfoot people have ever seen,” Sam said. “We can do the trick with horsehair from the groomer and some glue. We’ll send Darius out early to pick up a few thorns and thatch to look authentic.” “Hold on,” said Darius. “You got to give me a say in all this.” The three men stood at the edge of the concrete. Cheatgrass pocked the snowy field behind them, rising toward the foothills they could not see but knew were there. A scramble of sage and scuttled boulders were cloaked in the skirt of fog, buried under a blanket of snow draped on the mountains. A series of storms was moving in from the west where they would be pinched off by cold dropping down from the north. Spring was struggling to arrive on the earth tilting slowly toward the sun, changing temperature and time. The days would be getting longer. The milky tears of sleet ached to be spring rain. Beyond the fog was a place Bigfoot could live in the mountains; a place where a boy could find him. “We’ll do it,” Jim said. “Me and Sam will set it up so it’s believable. You’ll see.” NICKY The night light in Nicky’s room seemed to float the boy in the air in front of the window where he stood with head dark against the glass. “Can’t sleep?” He heard someone ask. When he turned around, he saw his father sitting in a chair in the hallway. “Can’t you?” The boy asked. He was thin, sixty-three pounds, and the knots of his knees stood out unnaturally because he was just beginning to grow when the cancer overran his immune system. “No,” Sam said. “If you can’t sleep, neither can I.” “I had that dream again,” Nicky said, walking to stand in front of his father, the man he had watched grab a mangy mare by the neck and wrench it to the ground so the vet could draw her foal out with a cable and jack. He climbed onto his father’s knees and let his pale legs dangle like that foal’s, his mop of blonde hair falling against the father’s barrel chest. “It seems like I can’t wake up when I’m having it, but then I open my eyes.” “Tell me about it again.” “There’s this boy in a cage and there’s all these other cages but they are empty. It’s like somebody forgot to let him out, the only one. That’s it. And I’m just watching him, and nothing happens. He doesn’t even ask me to let him out. He just stares at me, and I stare at him.” “Why does it scare you?” “I don’t know. It just does.” “I’ll leave the door open. You are not in a cage.” The boy stared at his father for a long time. His eyes purple underneath where they should have been sunburned from days in the fields chasing crows with a lasso like the other boys, trying to catch something they never would. His skin bleached rather than browned by the outdoors. “Will Mom come back when I’m gone?” “Get back in bed, Sam said. “It’s not your fault she left.” SAM On Saturday, Jim rocked his fix-it van to a stop at the Kut and Kurl. He carried a bag of horsehair trimmings and wore his new Justins because his wife had come home with a new pair of pocket-stitched jeans and he was due. Sam and Darius had arrived in Sam’s truck and waited so the three of them could walk in together. Nicky was at the hospital and the doctors said he couldn’t leave until tomorrow. Sam had dropped him off before picking up Darius. The radio was still tuned to the gospel channel and a drawl voice commanded listeners to doubt not and thrust their hands inside of Jesus. Sam cut the engine. Snow was falling out of the air, thick as down when Sam cleaned geese and the wind kicked up. It made him think of the elements of nature, how two things can look the same but be so different. “I brought wader socks,” Darius said. “I put ball bearings up into the toes to make my footprints look less human.” Sam nodded. He was twisting the grip on his steering wheel like he was trying to change the shape of it before he levered the handle and shouldered the truck door open. Jim hauled the load of horsehair like a bird bag full of dead pheasants. He was proud of the bounty of mane he had secured from the vet. DEBRA Debra stood at the screen door. “Of course I will,” she said. “I love that boy.” “Everybody does,” Sam said as the boys walked in, somber and resolute. “But God loves him more and wants him back.” Debra trembled, holding back emotions was not easy for her and caused her insides to shudder. She spun the chair around and motioned for Darius to sit down. “Take everything off,” she said like a nurse. “Lock the door,” Darius said, tossing his flannel jacket onto a folding chair. He pulled off his boots and struggled to roll his socks off while standing. The Henley shirt came off next, wrestled over his head releasing his round, brown belly. He dropped his Carhart pants on the floor and Jim picked them up. “Judas,” Darius said. “Everything?” Debra nodded. “I don’t believe Bigfoot wears BVDs.” Darius dropped his underwear and tossed them onto the chair with the pile of his clothes that smelled like creosote. He stood there naked, dark skin pocked on his shoulders, and creased with stretchmarks just above the hips. Debra looked at him, sizing him up. Darius sat down on the chair, the vinyl squeaking beneath his bare skin. He took a deep breath. Sam dumped the horsehair out on a table and started sorting through it. Debra cut the tip off the craft glue bottle. Sam taped the magazine picture on the mirror next to a photo of a woman with short bangs and a long mullet in the back. Debra stared at Bigfoot for a moment. Then she sucked air through her teeth and studied the mound of brown human in front of her, the belly like a mare’s, the pebbles of black hair on the chest. She shuffled back and forth on swollen ankles, eyeing the blank canvas and seeing where the natural worn spots would be if he were Bigfoot, the valleys filled with thick hair, the creases where ticks could burrow. “It’s somethin’ seeing it from hoof to hide,” Debra said. Darius took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Just do your worst.” Jim and Sam drizzled craft glue in uneven streams across Darius’ chest. Debra worked carefully on his whole body, putting hair everywhere. She was careful about covering up the private area. When they were done with the front, Sam helped Darius pull on the wader socks with three ball bearings each and they covered those too. Then Darius got out of the chair and settled his elbows on the armrest while they put hair on his back and rump. Nobody talked. It felt as sacred as washing a corpse. “I’ll go get Nicky,” Sam said. “See you at Pearson’s Perch.” Darius nodded. “I’ll be there.” SAM Sam arrived at the hospital and slid a laundry basket out of his pickup truck. It was half-full of towels. He walked in through the back door and took the stairs up to the third floor, breathing heavy when he reached the top, his mind envisioning every step of his escape as he passed the children’s paintings of winged angels hung in the stairwell. He held the basket low as he passed the nurse’s desk and slid the glass door back and stood over Nicky. “There’s been a sighting,” Sam said. “A what?” Nicky sat up weakly, surprised but glad to see his dad. “Shhhhh,” Sam whispered. “There’s been a sighting out to Pearson’s Perch.” “But…” “Do you want to go?” Nicky was pale, his lips gray. “Bigfoot?” “Yes. We’ll only be gone an hour.” Sam tossed the towels onto the bed and set the basket on the floor. Nicky slid down and curled up in it, his eyes unnaturally wide. He folded himself like a baby bird in an egg. Sam covered his son with towels and unplugged the monitor from the wall. A faint beeping noise sounded. He hoisted the laundry basket onto his hip and ducked into the hallway while the attending nurse looked over her shoulder but continued her conversation with the other nurses. Sam lumbered down the stairs, wobbling with the boy in front of him. He shouldered Nicky at the bottom, hurried out the door and set his frail son on the front seat of his truck. “Stay down,” he said. Nicky giggled. It was the first happy sound he’d made in two months. They moved slowly out of the parking lot and Nicky poked his head up, perched in the basket and looking out the window at the snowflakes turning to water when they hit the glass. The cold made his face grayer than in the hospital. He shivered. Sam turned up the heat. They made new tracks in the snow on the highway. “I brought you some boots and coveralls.” Nicky rolled out of the basket and started getting dressed. “She,” Nicky said. “Bigfoot is a she . Everybody thinks otherwise, but it’s a mother. That’s why it’s so hard to get a look at her, mothers got a way of being invisible.” Even though Nicky was excited to reveal this bit of information, Sam began to weep. He didn’t want to hear about mothers and all their willful love. It reminded him of Kelli. He steered with one hand and pawed the moisture away. “Makes sense,” he said. They motored slowly off the highway and up a sheep road to a gravel turn-around, the snow falling in lager flakes, some the size of aspen leaves in the high altitude. “Down this slope in Negro Bill’s Canyon where they saw him last,” Sam said, when they were climbing out of the truck. “They don’t call it that anymore,” Nicky said. “I saw it on the news. Now they call it Shadow Canyon since it is so narrow and the sun only gets there part of the day.” “Old habits. Old ways,” Sam answered. “I don’t think Darius liked the old name.” Nicky said. “He might prefer Bill’s real name, William Grandstaff.” “You read too much. I don’t think he minds one way or the other.” Snow was falling on the trail and Sam inhaled snowflakes when he breathed in. The large flakes held their shape in the thin air, compressing under their feet, wafting before them as they hiked. Nicki walked forward awkwardly, bundled in the insulated coveralls, and work gloves. A towel around his neck for a scarf and oversized work boots. He looked into the cloud of snow. “Let me lead,” Sam said. The two worked their way down the rocky path that overlooked the choked canyon. The ground was slippery, and the dried Juniper branches damp and brittle, buried like steel game traps. They moved carefully, the father testing every step and the son placing his feet in his father’s footprints. Sam reached for a juniper branch to steady himself, but it gave way. His feet slid; his weight teetered. He put an arm out to break his fall, but the cross hatch of branches gave way, and he went down hard on his hip and a bank of snow followed him over the edge. Nicky could hear his father thrashing through the brush and scraping on the shale while a rivulet of high mountain detritus flowed down the furrow Sam left plowed. “Dad!” There was a long, dead silence. “I’m OK, Nicky,” Sam’s voice floated up from the bottom of the narrow ravine. “I’ve jacked up my ankle, son. Stay there. Stay right there!” “I can get help,” Nicky called out. “Stay there,” his father called back. “I’ll get up to you. Just give me a minute.” NICKY Nicky fanned the deepening snow around him and stomped a waiting place. All things in the cold were shrouded. He listened to his father grunting and turning and kicking loose rubble. He could hear the labored breaths, the air sucking through his father’s mouth into his lungs, the coughing. Nicky cocked his head and listened to a new sound, the shuffling of feet not far from him, a strange and soft sound. His boyhood years in the brush had taught him to see with sounds, gauging size and distance. He turned his head to the sound as it moved along the bottom, around a stand of oak brush until it was below the rise of the trail that dipped steeply. Through the veil of snow, he could see his father’s form on the shoulders of some beast he could not make out. A dark head appeared, covered in hair. A broad chest, bare in the snow, head facing down, a barrel body covered in hair tangled with briars, snow knots and mud. The beast moved awkwardly, the snow churning in a wake behind him. The beast did not look up. Nicki could not see its eyes. It opened the truck door and dropped his dad inside. Sam was passed out from the pain. His foot bent at a right angle at the shin bone. Nicky stood facing the beast. “Will he live?” “Yes,” said the beast, letting its eyes be seen. “You’re Bigfoot?” “Maybe.” “You could be Negro Bill.” “He died a long time ago,” Bigfoot said. “Maybe he didn’t die,” Nicky said. “Could be. I have heard of such things.” “His mother then,” Nicky said. “Mothers live forever.” “Yes. And they always come back.” “For sure?” Nicky asked. Bigfoot nodded. “Will you live forever?” Bigfoot looked out toward wilderness he could not see. The veil of snow hung thick in front of him. “I guess that depends on who you ask. Sometimes I’d like to die.” “Well, I am dying,” Nicky said. “And I’m afraid.” “There’s worse things.” “What’s worse?” Nicky asked, now waist deep in snow. The beast crouched on its haunches and tried to look out at the canyon, lonely and eternal. Thick hands of snow fell, pressing downward while small gaps of gray light drifted upward. “We should be going,” Bigfoot said. He collected the boy in his arms and set him in the laundry basket on the hood of the truck. Sam woke and moaned in pain, his lower leg now swelling. “I lost the key when I fell.” “I’ll go get help,” said Bigfoot. He hoisted the basket packed tight with boy and white towels onto his shoulder. With his free hand, he brushed the snow in front of him, clearing a trail in the waist-high drifts, the whiteness floating up and falling at the same time. ANGEL “I seen the creature come in off the foothills through the snow. It was white as steamed milk, couldn’t even see the mountains. He appeared, trudging like the creature he was, and it was clear that my place was his destination. “His head was down and his fur like a bison’s was covered in snow knots. On his shoulder was Nicky, wrapped up like the Christ child in a laundry basket. He opened the door and the glass fogged. He set the boy down like a doorstop where the warm air could rush over him and walked back on the same line he came in on, like he had some inner compass directing him back through the snow. I dropped the coffee right there; you can still see the stain of it on the floor. I slid the boy in, and he told me the whole story. God’s angels aren’t what you seen in Sunday school, feathered wings and white and floating. Some, I guess, are brown and hairy and strong enough to trudge eight miles through the snow to save a boy. Those such things happen here.” I write to discover those things that change us, the little breakthroughs that give birth to redemption at best, and a new way of seeing things at the least. The epiphany comes in the action of writing, muddling through sentences to try and discover an out to a dilemma. Previous STEPHEN WUNDERLI is a freelance writer for The Foundation for a Better Life. He is the recipient of the United Nations Time for Peace Award, the Bridport Prize in Literature, and an EMMY. 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.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, 2025), 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