< 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

A Love for Loneliness by Stacy Julin They were hours I’ve lost track of now. Those you glimpse in dreams but lose in light of morning. Long days on end in the bluish hue. Loneliness sat with me awhile, then laid with me in bed. I let him stay longer each visit, unafraid and even accustomed to the silence he brought as a gift. Like the cold that curled around me from my cracked window, he wrapped around my grief and lived beside me, until we both longed for days when blood was warm. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue "A Love for Loneliness" was published in my chapbook, Visiting Ghosts and Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2018). I am an only child. My parents were wonderful people, but I spent many hours alone. I would read and write, and I developed such a love for books and poetry. I came to treasure my time alone to write stories and poems. I lost my beloved parents as a young adult woman. At that point, writing really gave me peace and a way to express how I felt. This poem is about a complicated relationship with loneliness. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - Michaelmas by Lisa Bickmore Next

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

Belief by Mike White Flowers fitted into the shape of a cross. Organ music with no known point of origin. The arrangement of his coarse hands in the casket. The too-white shirt. The little touches he taught us you better believe show up on the bill. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This is a poem built up of fragments that I hope still manages to coalesce into a micro-narrative and, in some sense, a cameo portrait of an individual personality. That the personality in question is shown lying in a casket is rather typical of my work. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MIKE WHITE is the author of How to Make a Bird with Two Hands (Word Works, 2012) and Addendum to a Miracle (Waywiser, 2017), winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Next - Without Question I Am by Mike White 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

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

A Twist of the Vine by Naomi Ulsted We seemed to be stopped in the middle of the road for no reason. I leaned over my baby brother Adrian’s chubby legs to peer out the window while he shoved at me. Outside, just past the dirt road where our wood-paneled station wagon sat motionless, was a wall of forest. The air smelled of recent rain, but late spring sun dried the droplets trying to cling to the dense mass of underbrush leading into the damp darkness of the forest. Well , Mom said, turning around in the front seat to face me. What do you think? Think of what? I asked. Mom’s long brown hair was fixed in my favorite style, with two sections pulled into a gold clip at the back of her head. The remaining strands fell over her shoulders. Adrian, who had been clambering around the back seat during the thirty-minute drive from my grandmother’s house, reached hands smeared with teething biscuit toward her hair. She absentmindedly pushed them away. This! she announced, gesturing her arm out the window toward dense woods. The property for our new home! I thought of my grandmother’s tidy lawn with its perfectly rounded shrubs and straight mowed lines in the grass. I suspected the surprise Mom had been promising me today was not going to be a fun surprise, like a trip to The Farmette for an ice cream cone. This was going to be one of those grown-up surprises that are kind of boring until they are kind of complicated, like when my brother came along or when I got my new dad. Even though I thought Mom and I had been doing just fine on our own. You see? she went on, smiling back at me while Dad leaned over the steering wheel, trying to distance himself from the gooey teething biscuit my brother was waving. I told you we’d get our new place before you started second grade. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be seeing. There were only trees and dusty road, but my mom was happy in a way she usually wasn’t. We had moved from Nebraska a few months after she and my brother came home from the hospital. After barely surviving Adrian’s birth, Mom may have wanted the extra support from her parents, who lived here on Camano Island, in Washington. Camano Island is a large island located in the Puget Sound and, at the time we moved there, was populated primarily by people who wanted to live off the beaten track. People who didn’t want close neighbors, people who lived in log cabins or A-frame houses, surrounded by towering trees and deep moss. Nearly equidistant between Seattle and the Canadian border, both seemed equally foreign to me, as Camano was pretty much our whole world. Although we lived on an island, as I grew older I found I often needed to explain we didn’t get there by ferry or some other kind of boat. Rather, there was one road off the island that crossed a bridge into the town of Stanwood. Even the bridge wasn’t particularly stunning. Although Port Susan was to the south of the bridge and Skagit Bay to the right, the bridge itself basically crossed over a large cow ditch of stagnant water. Although Stanwood was home to a population less than 2000, it was our hub for shopping, school, and supplies. Nonetheless, Camano was a small and as of yet, undiscovered oasis. A short drive from anywhere on the island would take us to the edge of the Sound, where we could play in the placid waves, gather driftwood and look for tiny crabs. Although I’d been born in Seattle and coming back to Washington meant coming home, it didn’t feel like it to me. Mom and I had moved from Washington to Oregon, then to California where I got my new dad, then back to Oregon, and then to Nebraska where my new brother was born. So for us no state felt like home. For me, only Mom and her yellow Volkswagen Beetle felt like home, and the Beetle had been sold to help pay for Mom’s wedding. I tried to muster more enthusiasm than I felt. Great! I offered. I had to pee, and I hoped we could just appreciate the trees through the car windows and go home. Out! Adrian demanded, fiddling with the door handle where he’d been riding on my mother’s lap. Come on, Chuck , Mom said. Let’s explore . I almost asked to stay in the car, but didn’t think that would go over well, so I got out and we all stood at the side of the road, dwarfed by an imposing wall of ferns, pine and fir trees, nettles, wildflowers, and blackberry bushes. Although it was still warm, as days in June were long, the sun dipped low in the sky. Follow me, Dad said. Blackberry bushes rose thick and imperious, although the berries were only hard green nubs. As I stepped onto a trail leading into the woods, a loud buzzing from inside the bushes that towered over all of us, even Dad. Mom picked huckleberries from bushy clusters of tiny leaves as she held Adrian’s hand and he toddled along until he toddled into a stinging nettle and shrieked in pain. She picked him up and continued to chatter about the five acres they’d just purchased. We just have to decide where to build our house , she said. We thought we would build on the south side of the property, but if we built a little farther from the road, we’d get more sun. We’ll need to put in a nice long driveway . Her hair caught in a blackberry bush, and I helped her untangle it as she went on. Besides, a long driveway will keep us away from the noise of the road. It will be nice and quiet. Although the drive from my grandmother’s was only around thirty minutes, for the last fifteen we’d swapped the smooth pavement for a series of dirt roads that became dirtier and bumpier as we went along, passing fewer and fewer cars. As I would find, the school bus wouldn’t even drive all the way back into those woods. Instead, I would walk the two miles to the junction where the dirt roads met the paved roads, my sneakers streaked with dust in the early fall, or mud the rest of the school season. When a truck passed by me, clouds of dirt billowed behind it, swirling like a mini version of the tornadoes we’d seen in Nebraska. I bent down to pick a stem of wild peppermint. I crushed its leaves and breathed it in, then popped it into my mouth. When we lived in Oregon the first time, Mom and I had eaten greens we gathered from wooded areas surrounding whatever apartment we were staying in at the time. Mom hadn’t had any kind of traditional job since I was born. She forced me to attend daycare for three weeks once, so she could go to work as an administrative assistant. However, after paying for rent and day care, where I sobbed at each drop off, there was barely enough left to buy food. So she quit her job and went back to receiving her monthly welfare check, which gave us lots of time together to search for herbs. She made tea from the tiny yellow chamomile buds, which I would drink after stirring in large spoonfuls of honey. I once picked some from my grandmother’s driveway and brought a handful to her to make for tea, but she just asked me why I was dragging weeds into the house. This was all before my mom met my new dad, who married her last year and adopted me. Up until then, it was just us two, gathering herbs in the woods, selling crafts at outdoor markets, moving from one apartment to another. I didn’t think about the empty space where a “dad” was supposed to be. My mother and I had grown from the rich dirt of the forest together, all at once. We were like one organism, flitting from place to place, spinning in our homemade skirts, drinking in the sun and the rain as though that were all we needed. Then Mom told me she was marrying Dad because I needed stability. Because I needed two parents and Mom was not enough for me. I pleaded with her to let us keep just being one thing together, but I knew the real truth. I was not enough for her. Dad stopped abruptly, causing me to nearly run straight into his backside. Here , he said, waving his arm in front of him. Linda , he put his arm around Mom. This is the perfect place for a new house. The tiny trail continued ahead, flanked on both sides with deep woods. There was a scurrying sound in one of the bushes near me. Where? I asked, confused. It will be perfect! Mom said. We just have to clear it. As we stood peering into the bushes at nothing I could recognize as house-worthy, Dad reached around and tugged me close to him, He pressed my face into the scratchy denim of his jacket for a moment, until I pulled away. I reached around Mom’s middle to hold her tightly. My head was now just past her waist. Leaning into her soft side, I breathed in chamomile and sunshine. She shifted Adrian over to her other hip where he kicked me solidly in the head. Let go , she said, barked at me. I’ve told you I can’t have you clinging to me when I’m carrying the baby. Chuck , she said, what do you think about putting in a nice deck? Looking out over the garden? I was ready to go back to my grandma’s house. She was making my favorite tonight - fried chicken. Should we have the garden on the south side? Dad asked. Where should we put the greenhouse? It was also Tuesday night and we always watched “Happy Days” and “Laverne and Shirley” on Tuesday nights. Well, don’t forget we need to have a space for cows and sheep, Mom replied. I want them to have lots of space to exercise and be comfortable. As they continued to talk about houses, animals and gardens that didn’t exist, I felt my own needs becoming more pressing. Mom , I said, I have to go to the bathroom. Honey, it’s the woods – go ahead and go. Where? Go behind a tree. If you have to go number two, wipe with a leaf. Although we had spent time gathering plants in the woods, I still wasn’t used to just dropping my pants in the middle of nowhere. In first grade, I’d held my bladder all day once because I couldn’t go to the bathroom if there was a girl in a neighboring stall. I’d just sit there on the toilet, panicking until I gave up, my face reddening as I washed my hands for no reason. I walked a few feet off the trail into the woods. Adrian sat on the trail poking at the ground with a stick. He lifted it toward me, waving. Finding a tree I thought might be large enough to hide behind, I squatted down, feeling exposed, thinking of snakes and centipedes and spiders. I tried to relax. And peed all over my shoe. Shifting my feet, I snagged my sneaker on a vine, lost my balance, and toppled over, landing stomach first on a sharp snag poking up from the ground. The vine that had entangled my foot spread across the forest floor, sending tendrils up and around the tree truck. I lifted my shirt to see a spot of blood right above my belly button. I wailed. Dad appeared, shoving his way through the underbrush. What happened? he demanded, examining the large welt on my skin and the tiny drops of blood. I tried to pull up my underpants, but Dad picked me up and hauled me toward the trail. What’s wrong? Mom said, annoyed. She just took a spill , Dad said before I could respond. You’re fine , she said. Pull up your pants. Dad set me down and I pulled up my pants. I picked a large leaf and wiped at my wet shoe. Can we go home now? I asked. This IS your home , Mom snapped. I meant Grandma’s house , I said, lamely. I really hadn’t meant to say “home.” We had been living with my grandparents for two months we’d been back in Washington. In Nebraska my new dad had been doing public relations for a friend’s non-profit. Although it was better money than working as a stringer with the newspaper in Santa Cruz, California, where he was paid by the line, it wasn’t enough to support a family of four. So when Mom’s parents offered to let us live with them while Dad found a job, we crammed everything we could into our station wagon, gave the puppy I’d only had for a few months to the neighbor, and drove away from the flat yellow of the Midwest to the tangled woods of Washington. Dad had just gotten word he’d be starting his new job as a draftsman. My grandma had nodded approvingly at him and the house seemed a little less crowded after that. Although our noise and dirt and clutter clashed with my grandparent’s perfectly color-coordinated home, I loved being there and wasn’t in a hurry to leave. But now I saw the two lines form between Mom’s eyes that always appeared when she was angry. Grandma’s house is NOT your home. Now, stop whining and act your age. She turned and walked deeper into the wood. I sat down with a plop in the dirt. I’d make her turn around and come get me. But when I peeked up, I saw only their backs, Mom holding Adrian on her hip. They were talking again, already forgetting me. I dug in the dirt with a twig, then touched the swollen welt on my belly gingerly. Finally, I got up and scuffed over to join them. Mom reached out and stroked my hair as we all gazed at our imaginary new home. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This is the first chapter of my memoir, A Bouquet of Weeds: Growing Up Wild in the Pacific Northwest (High Frequency Press, forthcoming in 2026). Although part of a larger work, it stands-alone as well. I love this piece because of the child narrator’s voice used. I really enjoyed telling the story of my mother’s attempt to transition from a wandering lifestyle to one that would be more settled and stable, albeit the wild environment she and my stepdad selected doesn't feel either settled or stable. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NAOMI ULSTED writes young adult fiction and personal essays. She is the author of The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021). naomiulsted.com Next - Something to Surrender To by Austin Holmes Next

Something To Surrender To by Austin Holmes fear vibrates between flesh ricocheting off bone nothing is truly inviolable upon recollection time reveals the seams and how to split them every year I seem to unlearn my understanding of life the residue of memory clinging to me like cosmic dust mingling to new forms without purpose yet at night I stare upward at the damselflies like dark strands of vitreous on the retina of the clouds darting away as the eyes chase them before the sun arrives from the unwinding dark the old notes of night’s world fade as though lightly fallen upon the skin of a dream and I give myself to it Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue The last few years have increasingly taught me that acceptance of human fragility and the ability to be vulnerable is an immense strength, and that often, when feeling crushed by the weight of things we cannot control, it is the intimacy of small moments that bring me back to Earth. .................................................................................................................................................................................... AUSTIN HOLMES lives in southern Utah, where he spends life with his beloved partner and their dog. He contemplates what he can and falls in love with the sky daily anew. Next - Bone Suite by Austin Holmes Next

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