Stacy Julin < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Last Meal Stacy Julin 00:00 / 00:32 Last Meal Stacy Julin That last meal as a family was difficult. He struggled to swallow the food down between sobs. The kids were quiet. He said it was the best meal he had ever eaten, but it was over for me. Twenty years of sadness and cheating. I admit my heart ached for him, but after he left, nothing would stop me now from locking that door. This poem was written at a very hard time in my life. Now, when I look back on it, I'm really proud of myself. I taught my children something very important. No one deserves to be treated badly, and you are strong enough to leave. Previous STACY JULIN'S work has been published in Oyster River Pages , Pirene’s Fountain , Sweet Tree Review , Southern Quill , and Word Fountain , and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, A Pebble Thrown in Water (Tiger’s Eye Press, 2010), Visiting Ghosts and Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Things We Carry (Finishing Line Press, 2024). She lives with her family at the base of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. 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 chapbook first poems after the stroke (Finishing Line Press, 2024). shananballam.org Next

Robert Okaji < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Trigger Alert Robert Okaji 00:00 / 00:53 Trigger Alert Robert Okaji Trigger alert: I'm dying. I am dying , and nothing will change that, not philosophy, not chemicals, not will. Not even the sky nor the ground it beguiles somewhere out of sight. Consider the horizon as loneliness, as line curved through eyeshot and smoke. As nexus of sun and diagnosis. Of relief and slumber, the pain in my wife's smile when she kisses me goodnight. I am dying , and I cannot picture the universe without me, or me, nonexistent, bodiless, simply not here. "Trigger Alert" first appeared in Stone Circle Review . I wrote the poem about four months after receiving a diagnosis of late stage metastatic lung cancer, a terminal illness. It's one thing to be told you're dying, and another to admit to yourself that your being is indeed finite, that one day, not far off, you'll no longer smell the morning coffee, you'll not feel your wife's body next to yours in bed, you won't cheer for the inept Dallas Cowboys, you won't do anything, you will not be anything, you simply will not exist. Previous ROBERT OKAJI has late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review , Vox Populi and other venues. Next

klipschutz < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Hymn for Lorca klipschutz 00:00 / 00:37 Hymn for Lorca klipschutz When the sun shines I do not dream of Revolution There is a naked girl in the sand singing Now the clouds have swallowed her and the streets are in chaos Sad guitars are gleaming swords— As we storm the Palace I awake Her shy tongue is restless as it darts from mouth to mouth from revolution to revolution. "Hymn for Lorca" was previously published in The Erection of Scaffolding for the Re-Painting of Heaven by the Lowest Bidder (1985). Written when I wasn’t yet 20. (I am 68 now.) I was channeling the man himself, or thought I was. The ending surprised me, still does. A revolution is a breakthrough, no? Previous klipschutz (pen name of Kurt Lipschutz ) is a poet, songwriter, editor, and occasional literary journalist. He has been based in San Francisco since 1980. klipschutz.com Next

Among by Cynthia Hardy a half dozen poems: five about sky—darkening, flattening, dampered by cloud. Gray in all varieties now. The dark shadow of bark below fir branches, the pale trim of snow edging all. We dream of color, of tropical gardens, all red, yellow, purple, green. You say, Are you dreaming? I say, Not really, then tell all I remember: a sea, deep blue, the white collars of foam, the motion and relentless sweep towards brown sugar sand. The same water tosses a boat around as I wander from deck to deck, down dim corridors, leaning on tilting walls. I am looking for you, or someone like you, and ride the bounce and shift like a tilt-a-whirl. You drift there—in and out of focus—but I find you in every room. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue One of a series of poems I wrote during the Covid lockdown period in Zoom meetings with Hippies in the Attic, a group of writers based in Green Bay, WI included in Rude Weather (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, forthcoming). It’s partly a reflection on a recurring theme in my poems, including the weather and the sky, snow, and the porousness of the boundary between poetry and dreams. .................................................................................................................................................................................... CINDY HARDY writes from Chena Ridge, Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published poetry and fiction, with a new poetry collection, Rude Weather forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Next - Insomnia by Cynthia Hardy 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 , Vol. 23, No. 3. 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 Light Scatter 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 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

Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room by Paul Fericano I can plainly see they are grateful and relieved to be inside off the streets where most of the neighbors are cautious suspicious troubled by their persistence their appearance their door-to-door politeness these two young gentlemen barely adult dressed in handsome dark blue suits slightly larger than their almost grown-man bodies clear sweet-voiced messengers who sit close to one another on my sofa enjoying the cookies I just baked the familiar aroma hanging in the air drifting into conversation like a memorable prayer in truth they can’t quite believe their good fortune their luck in finding me someone who really wants to hear what they have to say in this cozy container a refuge from the cold biblical ambiguities of this day thrilled actually to share their knowledge of God’s chosen plan for his people and so I bring it up I serve it up like holy communion: I want to know about men who marry other men I want to understand exactly what it is what it really means when we choose to be with one another without complaint I want to hear from these eager young missionaries I want to know what the question is but first I coax them to try the oatmeal raisin foolishly boasting that I use only the best ingredients just the right amount of sugar no coconut pointing out that when it comes to oatmeal cookies or anything else for that matter using coconut is the real sin here and I smile and I give them a wink and suddenly they both stand as if on cue startled these two sweet melodic declarations of truth on fire rapidly turning the pages of ancient texts in their heads searching for cautious pronouncements that arrive without warning these visiting angels who now ask in unison: Are you gay? Of course this is hardly the question I was expecting to hear and equally surprised I also stand now wiping my hands on my flowered apron and reply: Aren’t you? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This favorite unpublished poem of mine was written way back in 1980. Since it’s always been a lot of fun to perform, I’ve particularly enjoyed sharing it at a number of public readings over the years. For some reason I never felt compelled to submit it for publication anywhere (until now). It was initially written a few days after an unexpected visit to my apartment by the two young missionaries mentioned in the poem. It wasn’t until much later that I happened to learn that they had apparently tracked me down after following up on a tip from an old girlfriend of mine. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PAUL FERICANO is the author of Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance (Poems-For-All Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Bulitzer Prize. yunews.com Next - Sinatra, Sinatra by Paul Fericano Next

Jamison Conforto < Back to Breakthroughs Issue Antelope Boy Jamison Conforto 00:00 / 01:53 Antelope Boy Jamison Conforto Roads work two ways so do phones webs of connection I could go anywhere the threads keeping me here are fragile and yet, so strong If I could sleep below the ocean make the sand my bed and watch the fish flit above If I could climb up a mountain make the rocks my home and hear the antelope run below I joined their herd once sprinting to keep up with their four legs hooves and horns of black ivory We chewed grass and roots on the prairies my teeth not built for rumination and my stomach unable to digest much Their fur is tougher than my skin They see farther than I can but they are dumb as bricks I know the quadratic formula don't know how to use it, but I know it X equals negative B plus or minus the square root of B squared minus 4AC, all over 2A An antelope could never remember that but that's okay, I forgive them just as they forgive my trespasses on antelope life We aren't the same but at the end of the day we are a herd of creatures together "Antelope Boy" was first published by Kolob Canyon Review in 2024, and was then the featured poem of its namesake collection that won awards at both the 2024 Sigma Tau Delta conference and the 2024 Utah Original Writing Competition. It's the first piece I wrote that really made me believe in my own poetry, and continues to inspire me to reach for even greater heights. Previous JAMISON CONFORTO is a writer from the Salt Lake Valley. You can follow his poem-a-day journey at @the_year_365_in_365 on Instagram. Next

Kayaking on Hebron Lake by Marjorie Maddox As when the astronaut, anonymous in his vast slate of space, stepped out from manmade vessel—beyond the printed map of fingers, skewed compass of eye, eco-skeleton of the self-guided— to glide on the dark surface of depth, beyond moment and hour, solar system and this singular body of shimmer shimmying outside each shore of season, tide and time, far beyond the mind of universe and wave. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue Some of my poems tell stories; some capture a moment. This previously unpublished poem does the latter, showcasing the intersection of worlds, particularly in connection to nature, the imagination, and writing. “Kayaking on Hebron Lake” was written during my Monson Arts Artist Residency in Monson, Maine, in 2023. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MARJORIE MADDOX has published 17 collections of poetry, a story collection, and four children’s and YA books. She is a Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven Campus of Commonwealth University. marjoriemaddox.com Next - Ode to Everything by Marjorie Maddox Next

Ode to Everything by Marjorie Maddox Enough of the lamentations. Open the window and sing! The world is awash with world: color-dripping globe always tilting into some Ah! or another, clouds stretching wide plump happiness, even in the noisy stage-show of showers, such sunny ovations. And the birds— overpopulating every poem— swoop here for free— swallow, hawk, robin, gull, eagle—what else can be written but wings that wave horizon to horizon? And enough of windows. Praise doors! Step out with arms open, and eyes gathering vim and vision: grandeur trailing from worm and woodchuck, branch puzzles of woods, open boat of breeze— all brimming with Hey! and Hallelujah! and Celebrate! such green giving of thanks, such miraculous mercy of earth: calm valley and even this rugged, rocky chain we climb now as family, claiming praise as respite, holding close each breaking day, dangerous yet divine in all its gorgeous glory. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue On of my more hopeful poems and one previously published in Plough , “Ode to Everything” reminds me to slow down, look around, and be grateful. As a writer, I often wrestle in my work with challenges or struggles. In the midst of such poems, though, I need to leave room for odes. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MARJORIE MADDOX has published 17 collections of poetry, a story collection, and four children’s and YA books. She is a Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven Campus of Commonwealth University. marjoriemaddox.com Next - Ode to Everything by Marjorie Maddox Next

Fireflies by Kevin Prufer He was fifteen and feeling hassled and he asked his mother to please fuck off, so she slapped him hard and told him to get out of the car because he could walk home. + As he walked, his anger smoldered. He imagined her car crushed against a tree, he imagined her pleading for help as he strode right past toward home exactly as she’d commanded— + and half an hour later, as he rounded the corner to their yellow house, he saw her blue Honda in the driveway, and knew she was already at her desk because + it was evening, because she had homework, because she had her accounting class early in the morning at the college and still he was angry, though his anger had lost its focus— + why had he said what he’d said? Why had she slapped her own son? Anyway, he wanted to hate her + but it was a beautiful summer evening, the chirring of crickets, the fireflies— he would remember the fireflies years later rising and falling in the gloom, + his old gray cat uncurling on the porch steps, walking up to him, purring and rubbing her cheek against his leg there beneath the streetlamp. + The cat was long dead, but his mother was still alive. Just today he’d brought her another mystery novel, then sat with her in her hot little apartment while she went on about what someone or other said to someone else, he didn’t try to keep track, + but as she spoke, his mind reached back to that evening long ago, how he’d stood in front of their old yellow house in the hot evening, his hatred dissipating among the now-extinct fireflies that rose and fell above the rhododendrons. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue I’ve always been interested in the way a poem can move through time, making use of white space and shifts in narration to accomplish that movement. Also, how memory works in a poem—how, in this case, the boy’s conflict with his mother in his memory is every bit as real as the present day, when she has grown old and reads mystery novels in the hot little apartment they never lived in together. It’s this telescoping of time and memory that excited me as I wrote this, and the complex dissipation of childhood anger. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KEVIN PRUFER'S newest books are The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023) and Sleepaway: a Novel (Acre Books, 2024). Among his eight other books are Churches , which was named one of the best ten books of 2015 by The New York Times, and How He Loved Them , which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book from the American literary press. Prufer’s work appears widely in Best American Poetry , The Pushcart Prize Anthology , The Paris Review , and The New Republic , among others. He also directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to rediscovering great, long forgotten authors. kevinprufer.com Next - Automotive by Kevin Prufer Next