ALIEN EXCHANGE PROGRAM - HOST APPLICATION by Naomi Ulsted It’s extremely important that we choose a good host match for our aliens. This is the inaugural year of our Alien Exchange Program where we hope to facilitate mutual learning and understanding of these new neighbors we’ve discovered. Please answer the following questions honestly. 1. Do you plan to turn over your exchange student to the Federal government or any other for-profit or not-for-profit organization planning to conduct experimental exploration on our exchange student? Yes (you may turn in your application now) x No (go on to the next question) 2. Even if they offer you extremely large sums of money? Yes (you may turn in your application now) x No (go on to the next question) 3. How did you hear about the Alien Exchange Program? It was at the mall. Which is odd because I hardly ever go to the mall. I find the mall suffocating, with the cloying Cinnabon scent, the crowds of women flocking Bath and Body Works, the teenage boys cruising the walkways with slouching bravado. Not to mention that since our species have taken to using semi-automatic weapons with bump stocks to gun down large numbers of each other in public spaces, I’ve been especially reluctant to visit the mall, a concert, a movie, or any other crowded area. If I had the money, I’d pay for the virtual reality mall, where I could turn off the Cinnabon smell and if someone gunned down my avatar, I could just respawn somewhere else. But like most people in my social circles, I can’t afford that luxury. I won’t tell my alien how we like to kill each other here. That day I was in desperate need of a new pair of sand boots, so I threw my Glock in my purse, hefted myself into my bullet proof vest and headed out to the mall. I found the Alien Exchange Kiosk right next to the kiosks where young, beautiful men call out to middle-aged women like myself, offering samples of lotion and salt scrub. They’ll apply it themselves if you let them, rubbing your skin with their smooth hands. They can always sense their customer. We’re the ones wearing jeans from a decade ago. Our faces show we haven’t grasped the concept of contouring. We’re the ones with credit cards with high limits. If I could afford the virtual reality mall, I’d use a male avatar carrying a broadsword. Those lotion guys wouldn’t mess with me then. As it is, I try to walk in the aisle far from them, pretending I don’t hear them targeting me. As I passed by the Alien Exchange Kiosk, it placed images of the aliens’ planet into my mind. The planet’s surface was iridescent green and lush, not parched and withered like this one. As I came closer, the Kiosk’s smooth marketing voice resonated in my head asking, Do you have a thirst for adventure? Do you want to connect with another world? I thought about the words. I wanted to connect. 4. Have you experienced inter-stellar travel? (We know that only the top 1% of the country can afford inter-stellar travel. Or a house in the suburbs. Or post-secondary education. So if you choose, you can speak to international travel in your response to this question, as opposed to inter-stellar travel.) I have not experienced inter-stellar travel. When I was in college, I took out extra student loans so I could drink my way through a series of European pubs, but since I’ve grown older and more mature, I’ve redistributed my debt to involve less travel. Not less alcohol, mind you, but expenses in the form of living quarters, an iPhone, elementary curriculum feeds for the kids. Every day is planned and routine. When I traveled, I didn’t have plans. I woke up and perused a map over coffee. I shouldered my backpack and delved into the unknown. Now, when my alien comes to stay with me, we’ll have coffee in the morning. I don’t know if my alien wants scrambled egg protein for breakfast. I don’t know if my alien will even eat or if she’ll have an enlarged forehead and horizontal ovals for eyes, like in the old science fiction movies. I hope my alien isn’t slimy, but if she is, I’ll put a towel down on the kitchen chair. Come to think of it, I don’t even if know if my alien is female. Even we are evolving past binary constructs, but still, part of me hopes she’s female, like I’m still identifying. But I do know that as we regard one another in my kitchen, it will be like looking at that map in the morning, shouldering my backpack and hiking into the world of possibility. 5. While your alien is staying with you, we’d like him/her/them to feel as though he/she/they are a part of the family. Unless your family is completely dysfunctional, which may cause the alien to deliver a negative report about humans to his/her/their superiors. In what family events do you plan to involve your alien? In my extended family, there are no more weddings. The siblings have been married at least once, sometimes twice. Actually, we’re excited about a pretty big divorce happening soon. I’m hoping my alien can attend our divorce party after the trial. She can help me roll canapés and pour champagne to celebrate a new beginning. She can give us an alien blessing of some kind. A special symbol from her culture of a new start. She can stand or hover or whatever she does, in the circle with us, exchanging hugs. Of course, if the trial doesn’t go well for us, then I’ll keep my alien away from that function. My sister will return home to seek solace in one of her many online worlds. She’ll don her dragon slayer skin or a pull up her sexy spy avatar and forget about what just happened. My other siblings will sit and scroll through their phones like normal. But I will come home to my alien to see her playing Connect 4 with my children. We’ll make root beer floats and play charades and I will laugh and laugh, and forget the world is burning around me. 6. We want our alien participants to enjoy their time with you and the wonderful attractions our world has to offer, although we don’t want them to enjoy our world so much that they decide to come down here and colonize us. Can you speak to the types of attractions you plan to show your alien? Over a decade ago, I spent many afternoons downtown. I rode the city bus to the bookstore where I worked alongside the bookstore collie dog, re-organizing the New Age section and looking for attractive book covers to face out. For my lunch, I brought my cheese and pickle sandwich out to the park square. The benches were shiny burnished metal. The water from a bronze fountain depicting two leaping salmon sparkled in the sunlight. A pigeon gave me the side eye and cooed questioningly at my sandwich. Across the street, the theater marquis advertised the current production. I only made minimum wage at the bookstore and couldn’t afford shows, but being downtown in front of the theater, in the midst of the park blocks surrounded by sharply dressed business professionals made me feel like I was a part of something important. I would like to show my alien that place. She could relax in the bookstore, the dog sniffing her curiously. I’d buy her a book on chakras. She could reach her hand, or her appendage or appendages, out to the water in the fountain and splash with the children who wouldn’t be afraid of her, because they’re children who don’t fear things yet. I’d like to take her there, but it’s different now. I unplugged my children from their entertainment feeds recently and dragged them down there to see an actual show with real human actors in that theater I can now afford because most people prefer to escape home through their virtual reality systems. Bookstores are long gone and only Outside Dwellers have real dogs, since most people can afford a virtual pet. After the show, a nostalgic production that featured an old-style public school before institutionalized public education put children’s lives at risk, my children dragged me toward the salmon fountain. The water hasn’t run in it since the shortage years ago. Pigeons scavenged through the cracked and grimy tiles of the fountain without giving us a second thought. There were several Outside Dwellers lounging around the park square. Most Outside Dwellers are harmless. Scruffy and stinky for lack of water or dry soap, bare feet black with city filth, muttering stories that make sense only to themselves. That day several of them shared a six pack of 4 Loco. But you never know when a group of Outside Dwellers may be shooting up, not just smoking weed. Or when the story one of them is living in his mind may paint you as a threat. My kids wanted to play with the pigeons and my boy jumped from bench to bench, until I dragged them both away from the city square and the Outside Dwellers. We went back home where I hooked them up to their entertainment feeds again, nice and safe. If I took my alien there, she probably wouldn’t be afraid, like I am. She’d likely even sit down next to one of those Outside Dwellers, joining him on the grungy bench and sharing a 4 Loco. Maybe with her next to me, I’d be brave enough to hang out with the Dwellers, sharing stories and watching the light change as the sun dipped down into the smoggy sky and then dropped behind the towering skyscrapers. Twilight would fall like it’s fallen every evening, regardless of who is sitting in the city square, be it an Outside Dweller, an alien, or me. 7. There are hundreds of applicants for the Alien Exchange Program. In what way are you an especially good fit for this program? As I sit here in my living quarters, inputting these answers, I guess I can think of lots of people who might be a better fit. The families with money to take the alien to the places in our world that are still beautiful. Places with waterfalls, lakes, and piped in rain. I ’ve heard they still exist in some areas and the top 1% get to immerse themselves in those lakes, feel the spray of the waterfall on their bare arms. But when I was 13, I watched E.T. in the movie theater. Later, I watched more gruesome depictions of extraterrestrials, like those in Aliens, but my heart stayed with that waddling big-eyed, neck-stretching E.T. At night, even though I was 13 and knew better, I held up my finger to the window and searched the sky. I imagined my finger lighting up like Elliot’s and I reached it up toward the stars in search of an alien. Decades later, I know she’s up there, her own finger shining brightly. Please send me my alien. I need to meet her. Your application will be reviewed, and you will hear from us in four to six weeks. Should your application be selected for further consideration, alien placement will be contingent upon a home visit to ensure you can provide adequate facilities. This includes a fully functioning hydration pod, as aliens cannot adjust to our arid climate. You will also need to demonstrate bandwidth and networking links capable of reaching the alien’s home planet. Your signature will be required on our “Liability Waiver Contract” where you will agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Alien Exchange Program should you personally befall any harm from or as a result of actions taken by the alien. Thank you for your interest in the Alien Exchange Program. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Originally published in The New Guard . I love this piece because even though it's been five years since its original publication, it still feels just as relevant, both to the state of our society and to me personally, as it did then. It still feels as though we are searching for a connection that has proven difficult to find in this environment of fear and distrust. I had so much fun diving into this darker theme using the format of an application. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NAOMI ULSTED writes young adult fiction and personal essays. She is the author of The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021). naomiulsted.com Next - A Twist of the Vine by Naomi Ulsted Next

The Black Flies of Home by Brock Dethier Black flies dance in the air between my head and my brother’s, distorting the view. We sit on pinkish granite smoothed and sloped by retreating glaciers ten millennia ago. Below us, the Rocky Branch of the Saco River, then the ridge that leads from Stanton and Pickering all the way up to Davis, Isolation, and Washington itself. Farther west, the ski trail scars of Mt. Attitash, still the new ski area, though it opened in 1965. Black flies are small, hard to see, quiet. They like warm sheltered places-- behind your ear or knee. They follow the blood others have left. And bite. I react with large hard itchy welts that I scratch bloody in my sleep. Mosquitoes are everywhere but I’ve never seen black flies outside New England, so their presence is a special “welcome home!” to the region. Around us, blueberry bushes with subtle flowers-- little cream bells that will become the fruit of the New Hampshire gods-- rhodora about to brighten the ledges with cerise blossoms, grus eroded from the ledges filling the cracks between them, sweet fern. I wasn’t aware of being bitten but I find blood behind my ear. Within our view, we’ve skied both downhill and cross country, canoed, floated, kayaked, swam, hiked of course. We were born just out of sight to the left. We’ve come in search of iron mines and leave with sparkly ore, black fly bumps starting to itch, and a few crystals to take back west to what still seems after 26 years a temporary home. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Issue 1 Few who have experienced New England’s black flies would argue that they make the world a better place, yet for people who have grown up with them, the flies mean home. Having spent half my life in New England and half in Utah, I’m interested in how we think about “home,” and this unpublished, personal poem tries to illuminate the complexities of the concept and to highlight the irony that sometimes what bugs you may come to signify home for you. .................................................................................................................................................................................... BROCK DETHIER retired from Utah State University after directing the writing composition program for 11 years. His publications include From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music (Heinemann, 2003), First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers (Utah State University Press, 2005), Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them (Utah State University Press, 2013), and two books of poetry, Ancestor Worship (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015). Next - Fireflies by Kevin Prufer 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

Without Question I Am by Mike White The blind man on the crowded night bus, tap-tapping his way toward a dark window mirroring the lot of us, refusing with a brisk wave of his hand my hand, which he knows without question I am offering. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue First published in One . I thought this to be a suitable poem to (re)publish in a magazine dedicated to the nomadic life. True, the distance traveled in the poem is modest, but I was interested in the ways that we often discover ourselves in strange places (like a bus in the middle of the night!), places where the familiar boundaries separating inside and outside, self and other, are wonderfully permeable. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 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 - The First Time I Saw Snow by Jeff Talmadge Next

First Sighting Most people love butterflies and hate moth , he said. But moths are more interesting – more engaging. —Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs by Trish Hopkinson It must have been something about Monday or the dry summer evening, making me unsure of whether I’m bird or moth but feeling small, rolling out my tongue into the center of a honeysuckle blossom, flapping frenetically to hover against sunset’s breeze and hold my space in front of the flower. A hummingbird twice my size trills by toward an imposter, a red glass feeder on the porch. Funny how the humans look up and smile at the birds, watching softly but when they spot me, they squint and stare confused, grab their cameras, try to catch my likeness held in stillness—the lifelessness of my orange and gray wings against the backdrop of a high desert. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem is my current favorite unpublished poem because it reminds me of a specific moment when my husband first spotted a hummingbird moth and called to me to come see it. We had just recently moved to western Colorado, so I have fond memories of that time and of my husband always being so attentive that I never missed an opportunity to become inspired. I also get a kick out of the epigraph. .................................................................................................................................................................................... TRISH HOPKINSON is the author of A Godless Ascends (Lithic Press, 2024) and an advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and in western Colorado where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets. Next - Waiting Around by Trish Hopkinson Next

The Problem with Mrs. P by Michael Shay First problem: nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore Gloria’s house. Second problem: she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking. Third problem: her damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile drive into Cheyenne, ten if you factored in the hospital which was downtown. Fourth problem: the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was supposed to. She had her own prepaid cell phone with a few minutes still left on it. But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen. Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying. She tried to bite back the tears, but they came anyway, raining down on her nightie, the blood-soaked towel, the tiled bathroom floor. It was all so ridiculous. Why had this happened? She should have known better than to let him back into her life, even if it had only been two weeks. He came back to her, all humble and lovey-dovey. She took him back into her bed and then he was gone again and there she was, pregnant again, standing in the doorway, bleeding to death. Her main problem was getting down the stairs to the phone. Clinging to the wall, she made her way out of the bathroom and down the carpeted hallway. To the left was her daughter Kelly’s room. She grabbed the doorknob of the hall closet as she slowly passed. There were only twelve stairs but it looked like a million. Maybe if she just sat on the top step, and bumped her way down….She sat, a good thing since a swoon was coming on. She waited for her head to clear, then carefully slipped down the carpet onto the second step, then the third one. On the next one, her left foot caught the hem of her wool nightgown. She fell back, then felt herself slipping down the stairway; her feet, her butt, her shoulders bumping with each step; wincing in pain as the vibrations traveled to her belly. When she came to a stop, she noticed the quiet of the house. There was some sort of noise coming from outside the front door. She didn’t know what it was but she stood and, after letting her head clear momentarily, stepped slowly through the sparsely furnished living room toward the door. Which led to the morning’s sixth problem: she passed out, sliding to the floor like a wet sack. * * * Mrs. P! Mrs. P! She opened her eyes. A big hairy head swam in front of her. Maybe she was dreaming. Mrs. P! Mrs. P! It was the big head’s voice. For a minute she thought it was Robbie but her husband was thin and had a buzzcut in keeping with his role as a punk musician on the make. Who was it? And where was she? For a minute, she hoped she was safe in bed. But then she felt the rough carpet under her, the stickiness between her legs. There was a big hand on her shoulder, shaking gently. Mrs. P! The hairy head’s voice again. She wanted to say: My name is Liz, short for Elizabeth, and not Mrs. P, short for Politazzaro, Robbie’s last name which he had hung on her, presumably forever, and which everyone seemed to want to use in the abbreviated form, making her seem old before her time. She could see the man now. It was Big Ed, her landlord’s goofy son. The Retard, Robbie called him, as if he had a right to call anybody that. Big Ed was a lumbering overgrown kid, slow, who probably had a birth defect or something. But, last summer, he had been dedicated to mowing the weeds that passed for their lawn. That winter, he had pursued the snow with a vengeance. He unclogged toilets and hauled the trash. The girls had been afraid of him at first. Six-foot-five if he was an inch, and built like one of those no-neck linemen you see on NFL football. And that hair, a mass of wavy red curls that framed that moon face of his. But one summer afternoon he came over driving the tractor with the haywagon attached. He asked the girls if they wanted a ride and they said yes and they tooled around the property as she watched from the kitchen window. A few hours later the girls came in screaming, waving something that looked like a rope above their heads. Snake! Snake! they yelled, then told her how Big Ed had whacked the head off a rattler with a hoe and skinned it right there on the spot. He gave the girls the skin and the rattles. This is one big freakin’ snake, Mommy , said Kelly, the youngest, sounding just like her father, New York accent and all. Mrs. P? What are you doing here, Ed? Heard you yellin’ while I was shoveling the snow. Was I yelling? He looked puzzled. Somebody was. Call the hospital, Big Ed, she said weakly. I’m bleeding to death. Hospital , Big Ed muttered. It was strange voice that blended a kid’s cadence with the huskiness of a man. She felt his arms slide under her and, next thing she knew, she was being transported through the living room and out into the cold bright winter day. You’re light , he said, pressing her in his arms. Get my towel, Ed , she said. And I need the phone. Don’t have a phone , he replied. Big Jim took it away. Said it was costin’ him an arm and a leg. Big Jim was his father, their landlord, a big fat guy who seemed eternally pissed off at his slow son. Get my cell, she said, motioning back to the house. It’s on the kitchen table. And the towel, Ed, for the blood. I know where the hospital is, he said. I drove Big Jim there. Remember that time the tractor rolled over on him? She didn’t remember and it didn’t matter anyway. Big Ed had plans and there was nothing she could do. Die on the bathroom floor. Die on the way to the hospital. She opened her eyes and saw ice crystals glinting in a blue-drenched sky. She heard the crunch of Big Ed’s boots in the snow. The wind slapped her bare, bloody legs. I’m cold, Ed. Get you in the van and warm it up, he said. They stopped. Ed’s right arm shifted and she heard a door being pulled open. Crud , he said. Gotta move some things around. She could feel his indecision. This might be too much for him. We can still call 9-1-1 on my phone . No need , he said briskly. She felt a tug, then Ed was arranging something on the ground. He put her down on something cold and plastic, then placed a covering over her. Tarp and sleeping bag, he said. My camping stuff. I keep it in the van. Camping? Well, she was getting warm on the snowy ground. She could see Big Ed shove his body in the van’s side door. His shoulders moved like a machine. She had seen this van dozens of times. Usually she heard it first as it came down the county road and into the dusty drive, its rackety Volkswagen clatter floating in the window across the open Wyoming prairie. She had often wondered why he had this old hippie van and not a huge mud-spattered pick-up like his dad. Ed, I can sit up front , she said. We do need to get to the hospital. Take a minute, he said. Got a mattress in here and everything. She wanted to laugh. There was a racket of shifting and moving. Then she was up again, fitting neatly through the van’s open door. She was on the mattress, which was comfortable and didn’t smell, which surprised her. She looked up and saw Big Ed smile as he covered her with the sleeping bag. Hurry, Ed, she said. Please . A look of concern flashed across his face as he slammed the door shut. Another door opened, and she felt the van shift to the driver’s side. Big Ed was on the bus, taking her to the hospital. They would be there soon and all would be well. She wouldn’t die and the baby would be born and she would call him anything except for Robbie and maybe she would get a divorce and go back to work at a grocery store where she used to make pretty good money. Crud . That was Big Ed. What’s the matter? Van won’t start. Don’t worry. I know what’s wrong. So she was going to die? Don’t worry, Mrs. P. This happens all the time. She heard him fumbling around in the front, obviously looking for something. Then he said Ah-ha and she looked up to see him brandishing a foot-long screwdriver. The sun glinted off its metal shaft, giving it the look of a knife. Go ahead, she thought, plunge it right into my heart and get it over with. The van leaped up as it lightened its load. She heard his boots crunch the snow, then a couple of grunts. The van shifted slightly, and she figured he was underneath, groping for some gizmo or another. Then came the dreaded word again—Crud— and after a few grunts and groans, he was back with his head shoved into the driver’s side. Got a problem, he said. Need you to turn the key as I do this. Do what? Bridge the solenoid. What the hell, Ed, she said. I’m bleeding to death here. Hospital , he said. Gotta get the van started. She breathed deeply. She had a tom cat for a husband. Her father abandoned her decades ago. Now her life depended on this dimwit? Men were such worthless creatures. And she was going to give birth to another one? It didn’t make any sense but she would be damned and damned again if she would stay here and die. She wanted to be with her girls. She wanted to be anywhere but here. Mrs. P pushed herself off the mattress. Fireflies danced in front of her eyes. Her big bloated body felt as if it belonged to someone else, or something else, like an African elephant or one of those strange looking sea lions she had seen at the zoo when she was a kid. But she moved, slowly, inching her way out of the van and onto her bare feet in the snow. Where you goin’? asked Big Ed. Inside to call the ambulance. Or walk to town. Anything but this. You can’t. I can. She still was bleeding, that was a fact, but she knew from experience that she wasn’t in labor, which was good, because the last thing she wanted to do was deliver this baby two months early in the snowy yard with only Big Ed for assistance. Although she hadn’t felt any of the baby’s trademark kicks this morning, intuition told her that he still was alive. The house was a hundred feet away and if she could just reach the door and get inside, she could get to her cell phone, call the ambulance, and then take her chances. But those chances were better than the ones she had now. She walked five steps—she was counting each one— before a whole flock of fireflies filled her vision and the house kicked up at a strange angle, flying off into space, leaving her on her side in the snow. * * * She was nineteen —that wasn’t even ten years ago—and home from college for Christmas break when she had met Robbie. He was bass guitarist for the group that was playing at the local bar on New Year’s Eve. She was with her high school girlfriends. They all thought the band guys were hot so they hung around after midnight and bought the band some drinks and at 5 a.m. they found themselves at some dumpy house in Jericho, she and her girlfriends making out with the band guys. Robbie was a good kisser. He wanted more, of course, but she wasn’t that looped and she liked him when he didn’t press her. He even gave her a ride home in the band’s van, startling her mother when she sashayed into the kitchen, carrying her shoes in her hand. I’m in love, she said, which surprised her and made Mom cry. The tear ducts really opened once she learned that Robbie was a rocker with pierced lip and nose. She shared that last part with her mother, just to see if the response would measure up to her expectations. It did. She was two months pregnant when they got married that June. Nobody knew yet, except her mom and maybe one or two of her closest friends. Robbie’s band, The Spectral Losers, played at the reception. The honeymoon was short. Robbie was awake all night banging away at her, even when she was dozing off from the champagne. She shouldn’t have been drinking. Her mom told her to cool it a couple times. She promised that she would quit right after the reception, which she did, except for a couple little sips of wine now and again. The morning after she puked her guts out with morning sickness while Robbie snored away in the motel’s vibrating queen-sized bed. Not a terrific start to their marriage. She and Robbie were split up when Katie was born. She was living with her parents and her mom took care of Katie when she went back to work a few weeks later. She was just getting back on her feet when Robbie came back into her life and she turned up pregnant again. That’s when her mother kicked her out. She and Robbie found an apartment closer to the city, so Robbie could go in nights and play at the clubs and not come home until dawn. She could not believe they were in that apartment for three years. Robbie brought home most of his pay. She was working, although a good chunk of it went to daycare for Katie and Kelly. Still, they were making it. Taking the pill helped put a damper on any more baby-making. Then Robbie came home one day and announced they were moving to Wyoming. She about hit the ceiling. One of Robbie’s friends owned a music store in Cheyenne. He liked the idea of going West. So they had moved cross-country and here she was, bleeding in the snow like some pioneer woman from the olden days. But she wasn’t in the snow anymore. She was moving along on some vehicle that wasn’t the van. She shifted her body and felt the crunch and crackle of something underneath. She opened her eyes to the bright sunlight. Hey! It was Ed’s voice. She pushed up on her elbow. She was stuffed in a sleeping bag, surrounded by a tangle of hay stalks. Weathered gray boards marked the wagon’s periphery. She craned her neck to the front to see the massive frame of big Ed bouncing on the seat of a green tractor. The tractor’s engine had a throaty roar that actually sounded good to her. At least they were moving. Got your cell phone, he yelled. What? Phone. Big Ed jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. She looked down and saw the cheapo black cell phone resting on the dark-green sleeping bag. Her mother had sent her a gift certificate and she had used it to buy this pre-paid cell phone which she kept hidden from Robbie, especially after the regular phone service was cut off. She picked it up. The plastic phone was cold in her hand. She dialed 9-11. It rang twice before a mechanical voice said from somewhere very far away: Your Celluphone pre-paid calling service has expired. Shit , she said. Had there been more minutes on her phone? Or had she just imagined it? What? yelled Big Ed. The computerized female voice said: Dial one if you want to add minutes to your service with your credit card. Fat chance, she muttered. Dial two if you wish to talk to a customer service representative to renew your service. She punched two. A few clicks followed. Then she heard a new voice: All our customer service representatives are busy. Please hold on and one will be with you shortly. Canned music came on the line. She felt like heaving the phone into the prairie. She imagined it sailing over the barbed wire fence and falling into a patch of snow-whipped weeds, right at the feet on those blankeyed black cows she always saw wandering the open fields. But not today. She liked the little phone. It was her only link to the outside world, which was very remote. She suddenly realized why Robbie had moved them so far away from town. She and the girls were isolated, dependent on him. He had the car 90 percent of the time. Got a gig, babe, he would say, then be gone for a week. They would be down to their last crust of bread when he would magically arrive laden with grocery sacks. Junk food, mostly, heavy on donuts and ice cream and chips. His idea of dinner was warming up some macaroni and cheese, maybe cutting up some hot dogs, mixing them in. She got queasy just thinking about it. Dinner would be over and Robbie would be off again to a gig or recording session or God knows where or, maybe, she did know where. You okay? shouted Big Ed. Just fine, she said. Just dandy, using one of the westernisms she’d learned since coming to Wyoming. She was not going to cry, no matter what. I am not going to cry, she said out loud. I am not going to cry. What? called Big Ed. Nothing, Ed. What? They moved slowly down the rural road, but she felt each bump. The clouds were traveling faster than they were. Any increase in velocity and she might go flying from the haywagon. A man’s voice finally came on the other end of the phone. Thanks for calling Celluphone, he said cheerily. How may I assist you today? She almost laughed at that. Assist? Hah! Get me off this wagon and into the nearest hospital. Hello , said the voice. Hi , she said weakly. I’m here . I see that I am talking to a Mrs. Politazzaro of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Yes , she said. Nice Irish name, he said. Listen…. Call me Mark , he said. Mark Aloysius Kincannon is my full name, but they tell you to use only your first just in case we piss people off. Listen, Mark, I’m in a bit of a fix here…. We have a variety of payment plans to fit your needs. A wind gust rocked the wagon. Mark, are you reading that? They give us a script, if that’s what you mean. Where are you, Mark? Denver , he said, in a little airless, windowless room in the basement of a gray building. Guess where I am, Mark? In a cozy kitchen baking cookies? Don’t hang up, she said. Please. I got a real problem here and I’m asking for your help. There was another pause. This is real, isn’t it? His voice had changed, serious now. It’s real. She gave him a condensed version of the morning’s events. A haywagon? he said. Riding to the hospital in a haywagon? Down a nice country road, she said. Nice winter day. Can you go faster? It’s an old tractor, Mark. Are you passing any houses? You could stop at one and get some help. Nice suggestion, but Big Ed won’t stop. He’s determined to get me to the hospital. He’s a little slow, in the head. Is that what you mean? That’s right. You’re not going to make it. That’s right, she said, trying to imagine, for the first time, what Mark might look like. Okay , said Mark, suddenly businesslike. Give me your position and I’ll call it in. Promise? Promise. Now, where are you? On a country road north of town. Which one? What do you mean, which one? Listen, uh, what’s your name anyway? Mrs. Pol……… Your first name. Liz. Listen, Liz, there’s got to be more than one road north of town. What’s its number? She raised her head and looked for a sign along the side of the road. Nothing but fence posts. Hey Ed! she yelled, taking the phone away from her ear. What? he said, turning to her. His shaggy red hair billowed like a wind-whipped fire. What road is this? She could not see Ed’s face, but she imagined it scrunched up in some sort of thoughtful look. But this thought was taking its time and she was running out of it. Ed! she barked. Some call it the Old Chugwater Road. The Old Chugwater Road, she repeated into the phone. What about a number? She cursed under her breath. Does it have a number, Ed? Don’t know a number. No number , she told Mark. She heard chatter on the other end. Look , said Mark, coming back on the line. I’ve got another CSR on the phone to the Sheriff’s Department and the dispatcher says there are two Old Chugwater Roads. Two? Yeah, one still goes to Chugwater and the other doesn’t. Which one are you on? It’s north of town, she said brusquely. It’s where you go out north on Yellowstone Road and it turns into a two-lane and you come to a stop sign and you keep going out that rural road another five miles or so. Our little farmhouse is just before you come to that big curve…. Hold on, Liz, Mark said. More chatter on the other end. County Road 237? If you say so. We should tell the ambulance to look for a tractor pulling a haywagon, right? Can’t miss us, she said. Green tractor, with Big Ed driving. Me bleeding to death in the haywagon in the back. He laughed. Not so funny, Mark. Right. I’m sorry. More chatter on the far end on the line in Denver. The ambulance is on its way, Mark said, almost breathlessly. No joke? No joke. Stay on the line and talk to me. Okay, sure, I’ll talk to you. Then he was so quiet she thought the line had gone dead. Got a family, Mark? she said weakly. Got a five-year-old boy who lives with my ex-wife. That’s nice, she said. Think we’ll get our names in the paper? Ha ha, she said. Names in the paper. She removed the phone from her ear. Ed! What! Big Ed answered. Ambulance on its way. What? At least that’s what she thought he said. The wind shredded the words on their way from his mouth to her ears. Waaa , it sounded like. Then wawa , just like the word the girls used for water when they were toddlers. We want wawa Mommy , and she would get them water in those little paper cups she kept by the kitchen sink. The girls would spill it and there would be wawa everywhere. W awa , she said to the wind, the sky, the wagon. She was so thirsty. Her head ached. The cold crept through the folds of the sleeping bag. She heard a voice and didn’t know if it was Ed’s or Mark’s or the lowing of a cow or something she had never heard before. Waaaaa! she heard, wondering if it was just in her head or maybe, just maybe, was the distant wail of an ambulance. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I wrote “The Problem with Mrs. P” for my first collection, The Weight of a Body (Ghost Road Press, 2006). It was included in a 2010 Coffee House Press anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams . It’s about a real event that happened to a friend. I transformed it into a short ction with invented characters. It’s set during winter in Wyoming, a season for adventures and misadventures. When I read it in public, I like that it elicits both laughter and gasps. .................................................................................................................................................................................... MICHAEL SHAY writes short stories and essays. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams from Coffee House Press. His first book of short stories is The Weight of the Body . He recently completed an historical novel set in 1919 Colorado with the working title Zeppelins over Denver . Next - That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival by Michael Shay Next

READINGS BY AUTHORS FROM THE NOMAD Intro - Ken Waldman Austin Holmes Jennifer Tonge Kase Johnstun Rachel White Karin Anderson Lisa Bickmore Maureen Clark Ken Waldman 00:00 / 00:28 00:00 / 08:06 00:00 / 10:03 00:00 / 07:43 00:00 / 05:52 00:00 / 08:20 00:00 / 09:55 00:00 / 07:15 00:00 / 23:40 UTAH BOOK FESTIVAL

The Organization of Bones by Joel Long Let’s rearrange the bones by size while the goat looks on. Let’s line them up to cardinal points so shadow tells the time. The double doors may open for me to look over your brown shoulder, your dark hair that covers your skull where the rivers are falling and the trees are green with birds. Start with the bones of the ear, small sand, then move to the tarsals, these glyphs made for waving the hand, the hinge in the dark circuit of the blood, but here they are soldiers at May Day, such precision, such a proud song. The goat begins to hum and nibbles the threshold, fur bristling like vellum before the monk takes out the blade. The warmth of your body is so quaint against the arrangement you’ve made, a relic of what you are, the past so filled with warm bodies and singing goats, a thousand setting suns indifferent to the coming night. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue I was moved by Salgado's photo, Children Playing with Animal Bones, Brazil, 1983 , the three children in their own bodies rearranging the bones into symmetrical lines, making sense of the bones in some way. Of course, the light in the photograph is beautiful in its arrangement as well. With any ekphrastic poem like this, I hope to find release from the artistic image so that the poem finds its own voice tinged with the atmosphere of the trigger artwork. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JOEL LONG'S book of essays Watershed is forthcoming from Green Writers Press. His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review , Ocean State Review , Sports Literate , Prairie Schooner , Bellingham Review , Rhino , Bitter Oleander , Massachusetts Review , Terrain , and Water-Stone Review , among others. He lives in Salt Lake City. Next - Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us by Kase Johnstun Next

we've been out dancing by Gabriela Halas Throb of blood flows like sweet sap to rhythms both old, and unorthodox. Could the pluck of grass be set to measure? The pull of water from an upturned palm be set to song? Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Currrent Issue Sometimes the beauty of poetry is in its simplicity—the ability to convey a lot w ith so little, in tangible, literal words. Nothing shrouded, nothing obscure or abstract. The word 'simplicity' is not often used in a positive way with poetry but I feel like that can be such a strength. The poem "we've been out dancing" is just that, a way to celebrate movement in our bodies that feels both ancien and like we are experiencing it for the first time. .................................................................................................................................................................................... GABRIELA HALAS immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in British Columbia. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including The Antigonish Review , Cider Press Review , About Place Journal , Prairie Fire , december magazine , and The Hopper , among others; fiction in Room Magazine , Ruminate , The Hopper , and subTerrain, among others; and nonfiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Whitefish Review , Grain , Pilgrimage , and High Country News . She won first prize for her poetry chapbook Bloodwater Tint from Backbone Press (forthcoming). She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives and writes on Ktunaxa Nation land. gabrielahalas.org Next - northern climate II by Gabriela Halas Next

The Little House: Crystal City, Texas by Jeff Talmadge By the time my parents arrived at the prison after the War and with their first son, the 10-foot barbed wire fence was down, the towers and corner spotlights gone. The rifle-carrying guards who, around the clock, circled the perimeter on horseback, had returned to their old day jobs in that desolate place, not quite Mexico, not quite America, thirty-five miles from the border. When the Alien Enemy Detention Facility closed in the War’s shadow, the school district got most of it, opening the houses to others like that young couple and their toddler, who arrived from central Texas on a teacher’s pay, probably surprised that he, my father, was alive—and grateful, having come from nothing, to be living in what they called The Little House. If I could wish someone well who is in the past, I would wish it for them—that at least for that moment, they know some happiness in this life, believing, as they must have, inside someone else’s prison, that the worst was over, and they survived. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue After World War II, my family lived in what had been part of an internment camp for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent in Crystal City, Texas. This was before I was born, but my brother remembers it well, and always referred to it as “the little house.” It must have seemed like a miracle for my father to have returned alive. Here they were, having come from nothing, with a young child, starting a new life in that dry and distant place. I have few memories of them being happy and like to imagine that this was a happy time for them. Some of my description is indebted to Jan Jarboe Russell’s book, The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II (Scribner, 2015) and her related article in Texas Monthly . .................................................................................................................................................................................... Next - The Dream by Shanan Ballam Next JEFF TALMADGE was born in Uvalde, Texas, about 70 miles from the Mexican border and grew up in small towns like Crystal City, Wharton, Boling and Big Spring. At Duke University, he won the Academy of American Poets Award, and his poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He was a civil trial attorney in Austin before becoming a full-time musician. Jeff has received numerous awards for his songwriting. His most recent record is Sparrow . jefftalmadge.com

The Fox's Nonce Sonnet by Lisa Chavez Across the river, trotting, the fox. Who pauses to test the river’s rotten ice with ginger step. Will she trust it this late in the year? She draws back her paw, licks. Appraises the river’s dangerous skin. Looks at me as if to say what purpose, these stories, that make fable of my life? None, I say, but the sheen of dream and magic they lend to our lives. She cocks her head, considering. Squats to piss. She is just an animal, marking with scent. She scratches at her haunch, stands to shake herself, is gone. I’m left alone on the human side, in this territory demarcated by words. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This unpublished poem was inspired by stories of fox wives, animals who transform into humans. This is the final poem of a series that didn’t quite materialize. The poem reflects the longing I felt as I wrote: I wanted transformation too, but to escape words and human constructions. This poem points to the impossibility of that and returns from myth to the real world of the fox. It’s also my only poem written in form. .................................................................................................................................................................................... LISA CHAVEZ is a poet and memoirist from Alaska now living in the mountains of New Mexico with a pack of Japanese dogs. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico and is the author of In An Angry Season (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Destruction Bay (West End Press, 1998). Next - A Cat Place by Star Coulbrooke Next

Bruce by J. Diego Frey Cattlecar, chicken car, people car caboose. I like red wine. You like red wine. We drink beer with Bruce. Storage building, office building, luggage rack museum. I have no time. You have no time. Bruce is on per diem. Elementary, tertiary, seventh manifold. I'm remorseful. You're remorseful. Bruce keeps us on hold. Doppelganger, pterodactyl, ectoplasm scones. I'll distract him. You vivisect him. Let the desert bleach his bones. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue This poem appears in my first collection, Umbrellas or Else (Conundrum Press, 2014). Among other reasons why I am fond of it, it is the oldest poem in the collection, having been written two decades earlier on a train rolling through Nevada. I like to tell myself that I can hear the sound of the train in the lines. Another thing that I enjoy about it: the rhymes and playfulness. It feels very much influenced by one of my primary literary influences: Dr. Seuss. I also feel like I’m being a little bit Robert Frost-y with the tiny meter break in the second to last line. (I admit to some self-aggrandizing here.) Overall, a poem that I still enjoy reciting in public. A little tip: rhyming poems are easier to remember for later recitation. .................................................................................................................................................................................... J. DIEGO FREY is a poet living in the Denver area, which is where he grew up and never completely escaped. He published two quite likable collections of poetry, Umbrellas or Else and The Year the Eggs Cracked with Colorado publisher Conundrum Press. jdiego.com Next - Past Lives.....That's Still a Thing, Right? by J. Diego Frey Next