Village Fiddle by Ken Waldman I toted my junker, side seam already cracked, an old cheap box of wood that would take the steep banks of small planes aiming for runways, the bumps and jostles of sleds hooked to snowmachines, the ice, the wind, nights in the villages. Higher education missionary, I made rounds to students' homes (where I visited, but never fit), to liaisons' offices (where the state-issued equipment sometimes worked), to the local high schools and elementaries (where I volunteered service)— fiddle closer to my heart than the backpack full of books. Indeed, closer to my heart than the frozen broken truth: a bloody pump buried in utter darkness. Quick to unsnap the case, I scratched tunes where no one had, played real-life old-time music to Eskimos and the odd whites in that weathered land. The Pied Fiddler, I might have been, gently placing the beat-up instrument in others' hands, giving up the bow . Good for smiles and laughs. Random questions and comments. A third-grader: It must be like having a dog making noise— you must never get lonely. A high-schooler: Is it hard to learn? One of my college students: Why are you out here? Where is your family? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue First published in High Plains Literary Review, and Nome Poems (West End Press, 2000). From 1990-1992 I was the one-person English Department at the Nome Campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where I taught mostly over the phone, and occasionally flew to Native villages to encourage my students to keep at it. Each village also had a school, which I'd visit as part of my service. In classrooms, I'd share both my fiddling and writing exercises. I can't emphasize enough how distant these communities are. In one, a teacher mentioned how her students had never seen a violin before, a remark which led to me writing this, my all-time favorite. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KEN WALDMAN has drawn on 39 years as an Alaska resident to produce poems, stories, and fiddle tunes that combine into a performance uniquely his. kenwaldman.com and trumpsonnets.com Next - New Orleans Villanelle by Ken Waldman Next

The Little Old Lady in the Woodstock T-Shirt by Robert Cooperman I spot her in the Safeway parking lot, at least 80 and hanging onto her shopping cart as if teetering with vertigo at a cliff’s edge, her cane resting on the cart’s handle. On her T-shirt, the Woodstock symbol: birds trilling on a guitar’s frets, Love and Peace in the grass-aromatic air, while her cart totters with the blind staggers to her Bug that she trembles open. “Can I help you, Ma’am?” I ask, as she struggles to lift her shopping bag as if a barbell, and drops the dead weight into the back seat. She stares at me, as if afraid I’ll hit her over the head for her purse she grips like a lifeline, which maybe it is: with all her money, I.D., and credit cards. She looks at me again, notes my beard, what’s left of my hair gathered in a ponytail, sees my Jerry Garcia T-shirt, and demands, Wanna score some righteous shit? If not, get the fuck outta my face. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This might be my favorite published poem, partly because I manage to bring in one of my favorite obsessions, the Grateful Dead, but even more because of her unexpected and totally irreverent and defiant reply, breaking our assumptions about what a frail old lady should be and what she should say. .................................................................................................................................................................................... ROBERT COOPERMAN "a Brooklyn boy, right down to a B.A. at Brooklyn College," moved to Denver in 1974 to study in the joint Literature-Creative Writing Program, and received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and 19th Century British Literature. He has taught English at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He lives in Denver with his wife Beth. His volume In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Pub. Co., 1999) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000. Next - Frozen January Mornings by Robert Cooperman Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue SPRING CLEANING Terry Jude Miller In constant fear you’d become the hoarder your abusive father was, you toss everything that lacks immediate utility. You bring paint cans to the recycling center when you’ve used just a smidge of their subterfuge on a reclaimed nightstand or Mexican pottery planter. You discard me, finding no use for affection, for handholding in the movies, for anything more than a chicken peck of a kiss. Why keep something around that doesn’t work for you anymore? Your father’s backyard is full of motors with thrown rods and clothes dryers with defective doors. All go into the dumpster, where you place me beside the Texaco sign with burned-out bulbs and a length of chain missing its master link. "Spring Cleaning" was first published in Perennial , now Verdict Magazine. This poem describes a breakthrough by a companion that didn't turn out well for the poet. Previous TERRY JUDE MILLER works in academia in Houston, Texas. His poems have received multiple Pushcart nominations and have been published in Sontag Mag , Feed the Holy , Encore , Equinox , Trigger Warning Magazine , Exomorphosis , Ars Sententia , The Nature of Things , The Bayou Review , Boundless , the Poetry At Round Top Anthology , and Rattle . His latest book is People of Ink and Bone (New Dawn Unlimited, 2026) . Miller is the former 1st Vice Chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. terryjudemiller.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

John Steele 'My Camera Opened My Heart' In 1997, I decided to pick up a camera again. What followed changed me in ways I could not have ever imagined. The Power of the viewfinder. In January the following year, a friend introduced me to Utah’s west desert. As we traveled north along the east side of the Dugway range, I had my first encounter with a harem of wild horses. The significance of this day would not become clear to me for years. I knew nothing about wild horses or the wild herds of the American West, and for that matter, had little knowledge of domesticated horses either. But seeing these creatures in the wild for the first time left me speechless. The Wild Ones became mentors for me, teaching me the concept of patience. My evolving curiosity and desire to learn what these Beings were about took time; my first question was how do I earn their trust so I may integrate with them? I was going through my own process of reinventing and rebuilding myself, exploring Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. Before taking one step towards them, I would say a blessing, letting them know I was not there to hurt them. I still perform this ritual today when photographing. animals or birds. Animals have a knowing. In my early years of following the herds I patted myself on the back, thinking I was teaching them I was safe; it was quite the opposite. I finally realized they were silently telling me to slow down, enjoy what we are letting you see. When we are ready, we will come to you, and they did. The best part of all of this, I knew they would not eat me, but maybe run over me. I have been charged twice. Taking the advice of knowledgeable horse folks, the only thing you can and must do—stand up, make yourself look as large as possible, raise your arms and challenge them. Seems pretty crazy to challenge a 900-pound animal running full tilt at you, but it works. Of all my encounters with the Onaqui and Cedar Mountain horses, the most memorable was the opportunity to follow a days-old filly, photographing her first year and a half of life. Each time our paths crossed, I gained insight into the relationship between mare and foal, and their lives within the harem and herd. July and early August were hit and miss due to the Onaqui Herd splitting into two groups. By the middle of August, the filly and I had reconnected. I sensed a closeness between us, which was validated in the following months, culminating in October when she cemented our bond by placing her head trustingly over my lens. Through this journey with the Onaqui and Cedar Mountain horses, they shared their wisdom, allowing me to grow. Animals will teach us if we choose to listen. After twenty years of following my four-footed family, I recently published my first book, MUSTANGS, Utah's Onaqui and Cedar Mountain Herds . My only request: please become informed and lend your voice to save these magnificent Beings and the land on which they reside. Returning to Vietnam 2006 brought an opportunity to break through some very old, hardened crust—it was not pleasant, but needed. With two tours in Vietnam from April 1968 through April 1970, I never realized just how broken I was regarding certain issues. At the time, I did not think there was anything that needed to be addressed. Returning from Nebraska after photographing the spring migration of sandhill cranes, I needed to refill my fridge. I was zooming through Wild Oats when fate presented a gift. I met someone who turned me inside out. As our dating dance progressed, my shortcomings rapidly appeared. With caring and encouragement, she became the catalyst for me to start looking inward, asking questions, eventually planting the idea of sitting with a therapist, the best gift I have ever received. My therapist’s counseling partner shared a poem by Jungian philosopher Sam Keen entitled, "The Enemy Maker: How to Make an Enemy." I knew instantly what I needed to do: return to Vietnam. I always had questions about what I did and why my country was involved. The evening of July 5, 2007, seven months after listening to Mr. Keen’s words, I walked up the jetway on a hot, steamy Saigon evening, bringing emotions of the past front and center. On the 20-minute ride from Tan Son Nhut airport to Saigon’s District 1, it became clear to me why I was there. All of us who served during the war could not look at Vietnamese people without being extremely cautious due to the intermingling of friend and foe, clouding our ability to view any of them favorably. Like a child anticipating Christmas morning, I was on the street at six a.m., less than seven hours after landing. The morning commute was well underway, with three, sometimes four, on a motorbike heading to wherever, carts with produce or goods being pushed and pulled, people carrying wreaths of flowers for funerals: Saigon was alive. Taking in what was in front of me, my own internal video was playing. I had only been through Saigon a few times in the late ’60s, but now after 37 years, I was still reactive, looking everywhere for danger. With time, I slowly began to let my guard down; however, at first it was an uncomfortable effort. The process of healing began. I have returned five times, with one more trip to do. Traveling from the border of China to the Gulf of Thailand, interviewing survivors from the My Lai massacre, and attending the 40th & 50th memorial ceremonies. Sitting with my former enemy, drinking home-made rice wine (you can fuel jets with it) until we giggled like kids. We were both happy to see the good in one another. I believe there was closure for both of us. To categorize my return as a breakthrough moment would be a gross understatement; it was life-saving in so many ways. If someone had told me in 1970 that I would have friends from Hanoi, I would have had a healthy laugh, but I do. I have been to their home in a hamlet being swallowed by Hanoi’s rapid growth, and told I was the first Euro (slang from when the French ruled) ever in their hamlet; it was humbling. Having dinner, meeting Phong’s father (Trang’s husband), who was in the North Vietnamese Army outside of Saigon the day it fell. To this day, Trang & Phong and I still communicate. It has been a healing process, one that is not yet complete. My camera opened my heart, starting a journey that I could have never imagined. The Enemy Maker: How to Create an Enemy Sam Keen Start with an empty canvas. Sketch in broad outline the forms of men, women, and children. Dip into the unconscious well of your own disowned darkness with a wide brush and stain the strangers with the sinister hue of the shadows. Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed, hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as your own. Obscure the sweet individuality of each face. Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes, fears that play through the kaleidoscope of every infinite heart. Twist the smile until it forms the downward arc of cruelty. Strip flesh from the bone until only the abstract skeleton of death remains. Exaggerate each feature until man is metamorphosed into beast, vermin, insect. Fill in the background with malignant figures from ancient nightmares – devils, demons, myrmidons of evil. When your icon of the enemy is complete you will be able to kill without guilt, slaughter without shame. The thing you destroy will have become merely an enemy of God, an impediment to the sacred dialectic of history.

< 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

Jamison Conforto < Back to Breakthroughs Issue BOY Jamison Conforto 00:00 / 01:26 BOY Jamison Conforto When I was a boy it was just the two of us under that hot Utah summer sun, blazing high the smell of rain and warm rabbitbrush heaven a synonym for him, for afternoon And when I was a boy clinging to the fence watching my best friend run away in real time smaller and smaller through the wheat until I couldn't pick him out from the horizon And when I was a boy crying in my bed wishing with all my heart that I had gone with him disappeared together into the wheat instead of picking the coward's way of things I'm no longer a boy crying for the dead but I still think of what could have been if I had traveled through that rabbitbrush if we had run away together when we had time "boy" is a true story from my youth, when I watched my best friend run away. That day has been a landmark event in my past and a keystone of my inspiration for as long as I can remember, so to finally be able to put it into words is a breakthrough for me personally. I like to think the layers of resonance between the stanzas is a breakthrough in the development of my poetic technique as well. 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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue REAL ESTATE Marjorie Maddox At 92, my mother was the house I forgot I once lived in. With her bad hips, curved spine, and one missing breast, she’d still power-wash dirt off her beige, still accessorize with seasonal décor— poinsettia scarves and earrings, pastels for spring, no white after Labor Day. She’d still shuffle to the mirror to touch up the exterior with red lipstick, then welcome me home to the home that was her home away from home where living was assisted. When she pursed her lips in the Community Room in this old but beautiful house of hers where the bones of her foundation creaked, she didn’t see how her right shoulder, lower than the left, jutted just so toward the one eligible bachelor of 95 in the paisley-decorated room where she refused to fall apart or age, flirting all the way through supper— beef stew, fried chicken, or fish fillet served each evening at 5:00 pm sharp in the cozy dining room wallpapered with cottages of Cape Cod. Once, when we called her room, she wasn’t there. Once when we called after dinner, she wasn’t there. Once, or maybe more than once, this proper structure of a woman, circa 1929, retired to the bedroom on a “date” with an older man, both politely glued to Jimmy Stewart on a wide-screen TV larger than any she’d ever owned in the suburban home she owned with my father. My mother, too prim to breastfeed; who weathered two husbands (heart attack and Alzheimer’s); my mother who went back to work at forty and won awards selling real estate, top in her office; my mother whose baby body was a house abandoned by an architect and his lover, and then again by the new owner. This mother of mine, this house in which I’d lived, then lived outside of for sixty-two years, now clean and tidy, now emptied out, now for sale, now nobody’s home. It’s been almost five years since my mother’s death. Before her passing, I penned the collection, Seeing Things (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025) intricately exploring what it meant to be the daughter of a mother with dementia. As my mother’s memories floated away, my grief came slow and steady, so much so that after she died, it seemed there were no more grief poems to write. That changed this week. Unexpectantly, when I responded to a prompt on “houses,” fresh grief broke through. Today, I give you “Real Estate,” a poem that has now given me permission to write more poems on loss. Previous MARJORIE MADDOX has published 17 collections of poetry, a story collection, five children’s and YA books, and two anthologies (co-editor). She is a Professor Emerita of English at the Lock Haven Campus of Commonwealth University. marjoriemaddox.com Next

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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THIS HORSE IS THE BOSS OF ME Mike Wilson An opening in the ground in my chest opens a box that opens another world bigger clear, silver, and empty like Montana. # Steel spurs on my boots are for show: the barest motion sends the horse galloping through frictionless pixelation intimate as my retina. This mind-blind land is beyond my ken. I trust the horse to carry me where I should go. "This Horse is the Boss of Me" describes breaking through to the other side, as Jim Morrison put it, where desire carries us through a land we normally cannot see. Previous MIKE WILSON 'S work has appeared in many magazines and in his poetry collections, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (Rabbit House Press, 2020) and Before the Fall (Kelsay Books, 2026) , as well as a debut novel, Food Court , forthcoming in 2026. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky. mikewilsonwriter.com Next

Knotted Wrack by Maureen Clark I can see now that it was a winter for travel although I never left the house in Bountiful and the cat rarely traveled far from the southern windowsill I traveled to the edge of belief my religion like seaweed tangled around my ankles pleading to some God: help me traverse this trouble the loss of the religion I traveled with my whole life I am searching for the right word to describe this battle with my old self those unpredictable words that I see out there beyond my small life I want to travel to those exotic places where I might find the woman I believe I really am the woman I want to be authentic and unrepentant as thunder and lava the woman just out of my reach the object of all my inner battles I have been defined: weaker sex helpmeet the kept woman goodwife better half one of nature’s agreeable blunders the woman behind the man sister second-class citizen, I live in the heart of Bountiful where my story is full of women ruled by religion women sacrificed to religion for man’s love of God more than woman the tangled sacred sense of God turns out to be the Devil’s shoelace seaweed in thin filaments that trip the logic beached lumps of seaweed the smell of salt a time of wrack and loss and women cast up cast out scapegoats I want a word to describe this kind of wordlessness I am labeled by this language so many words none of them written by women I am not a consolation prize a word that can be underlined pinned down I am the word dangerous the word wild I can only travel in one direction I’ll be a scalpel cutting out the words that insist I take someone else’s word for it not my own here in Bountiful I will weave an elaborately and bountiful life of shells and string and the words I’m not supposed to think question I can’t ask caught in this seaweed my whole life a sweet tangle of weeds separating the self from the saint/sorceress/sinner/seaweed the colors of the ocean I drown in I collect words for kelp: knotted wrack sea whistle gulfweed the cottage industry of green bottle seaweed the metaphor for a woman’s hair what is acceptable what is not chenille seaweed black tang lady wrack carrageen mermaid’s fan I will find a way to travel away from my past unknotting myself travel to an ocean big enough for Saturn to float surrounded by seaweed I will find answers there that I can’t find in Bountiful where I drown in the unappreciated bounty of identical houses a cherry tree in each yard bountiful place in the desert of roses near the Great Salt Lake where no seaweed beaches just crusted salt oolitic sand the bounty of silence of being silenced how ironic that Bountiful is the place where I lose my religion where it’s not just a word for abundance where I am finally full of loss enough to let go and accept the bountiful imperfection of myself this is where I live just a woman who is naming herself one letter at a time a woman who lives in a kind of poverty so rich I can be full of questions my feet bare I carry a jar of ointment I am a traveler looking for answers I will choose what I need to take with me I travel towards my own definition the one I choose I travel alone into this bountiful place to become a woman who gathers words and stones shells and seaweed a woman who hoards her verbs Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I wrote this poem about fifteen years ago. I was reading the poem “Lennox Hill” by Agha Shahid Ali from his book Rooms Are Never Finished (W.W. Norton, 2001) and the repetition of the Canzone was mesmerizing. This was a poem that took a long time to compose. Any kind of poetic form needs to work without drawing attention to its rhymes and repetitions. The Canzone felt like the perfect form for the project of trying to explain the journey o f a woman leaving the religion she has always belonged to and arriving at a place where she could define herself. The repetition was a good tool for this often-circuitous journey. [Editor’s Note: “Knotted Wrack” has since been published inThis Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024), and was nominated for The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Small Presses .] .................................................................................................................................................................................... MAUREEN CLARK retired from the University of Utah where she taught writing for 20 years. She was the director of the University Writing Center from 2010-2014, and president of Writers@Work from 1999-2001. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review , Alaska Review , The Southeast Review , and Gettysburg Review among others. Her first book is This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024). Next - Acrostic Lifeboat by Maureen Clark Next

Sinatra, Sinatra by Paul Fericano Sexual reference: a protruding sinatra is often laughed at by serious women. Medical procedure: a malignant sinatra must be cut out by a skilled surgeon. Violent persuasion: a sawed-off sinatra is a dangerous weapon at close range. Congressional question: Do you deny the charge of ever being involved in organized sinatra? Prepared statement: Kiss my sinatra. Blow it out your sinatra. Financial question: Will supply-side sinatra halt inflation? Empty expression: The sinatra stops here. The sinatra is quicker than the eye. Strategic question: Do you think it’s possible to win a limited nuclear sinatra? Stupid assertion: Eat sinatra. Hail Mary full of sinatra. Serious reflection: Sinatra this, sinatra that. Sinatra do, sinatra don’t. Sinatra come, sinatra go. There’s no sinatra like show sinatra. Historical question: Is the poet who wrote this poem still alive? Biblical fact: Man does not live by sinatra alone. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue “Sinatra, Sinatra” was responsible for cementing (pun intended) my so-called reputation as a social and political satirist. Being an outlaw member of a poetry scene that seemed to have little interest in, or understanding of, the art of satire, I was constantly pushing myself and the envelope. The poem, a takedown of extreme conservative politics that used Sinatra’s name in vain, was completed in early 1982 after many drafts. The poem actually managed to attract the attention of Frank Sinatra and get under his skin (again, pun intended). It provoked some poetry lovers to dismiss me and the poem outright (this was, after all, the Reagan era). But it also motivated many others who didn’t really read poems to actually read mine. This favorite was the lynchpin for the 1982 Howitzer Prize, a literary hoax that mocked the absurdity of all competitive awards. After the intended target (Poets & Writers) was hit dead center, I dutifully exposed the hoax myself. This caused the usual righteous indignation and predictable blacklisting. But the overwhelming support of those who clearly got the message (and the joke) was all the more satisfying. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - Sacrament Meeting Started the Three Hours of Church on Sunday by Natalie Padilla Young Next