< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE GARDEN YOU MADE Maureen Clark we planted our oak tree saplings on the same day our husbands raced their carts to the garden center check-out they grew even when we were no longer speaking and were still growing when we mended we always knew they would outlive us our little lives short by comparison to their ringed calendars I would not be surprised if they met on moonless nights to gossip about us our human foibles and I wonder if our oak tree sends messages of condolence to yours now that both of you are dead and the garden you made is gone In "The Garden You Made," the breakthrough I had was the ability to write in a more minimal style, leaving out much of the detail to get to the emotional truth of the poem. Previous MAUREEN CLARK is the author of the poetry collection This Insatiable August (Signature Books, 2024 ) and has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir, Falling into Bountiful: Confessions of a Once Upon a Time Mormon , is forthcoming from Hypatia Press. maureenclark.art Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue REACHING Terry Jude Miller In artificial light, a claw-like motif is found on the Island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Its fingers turn back the clock of man’s first art to 68,000 years ago, 232,000 solar rotations as Homo sapiens before the painter filled his mouth with ochre, spread his fingers upon stone, and spat history upon his hand, halo of red, giving meaning to something beyond the reach of explanation, an inflection only the heart can find, struggles to perfect itself through language, religion, science, and stories recorded in a new medium, by torched vision, innate to man, but as puzzling as the stars above Indonesia, that never see this creature’s masterpiece, yet the artist emerges from the place beneath ground, awed and mesmerized by their dance of light. This poem was inspired by a BBC article on the world's oldest cave art. The poem investigates how art is the springboard to language, religion, and science. Every poem I write owes itself in some way to these first artists who possessed a thought and made art from it. 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 . Miller is the former 1st Vice Chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. terryjudemiller.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue PAINTING THE CAVE Shawn Dallas Stradley HGTV sends weekly emails showing 38 'what’s-trending' ideas to cover bare walls. Not much different than Lascaux, jonesing to make our mark. If not make it, buy it. Textile: two needlepoint parrots in oval frames, hand-stitched by Grandma. Walk out to the fire pit. Pick up a piece of charcoal. Mark making—Kilroy was here—that speaks to authenticity. Monotype Diptych: The Geology of Language , ink on paper, cream scribbles surface through the black. Indecipherable. People grow restless. "Shelter in Place" mandates attempt, in vain, to prevent the spread of something new. We just had to get out of the cave . Something wrong with your cave? Not happy staying in. Going out, deadly. Photos: black-and-white silver gelatin on paper, taken in grad school, the abandoned flour mill, when you tried to be a photographer. There’s no place like cave. There’s no place like cave. No place … if only ruby slippers… Don’t be dramatic, all we really want is a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie. Shelter. Place. Warmth. Food. Sex. Marks. What could the tally be? It could be feng shui, it’s probably just genius loci. Spirit of Place. Who dances across shadow walls in candlelight? Oil on raw linen: Two Naked Boys Dancing , painted by a bisexual artist. To see Tous les Matins du Mond e, the tragic film, somber viola da gamba scored throughout, but not every sunrise. Enjoy what can be seen from the kitchen window while eating oatmeal with blueberries. Watercolor on paper: Rainbow Grid , graphed like an equation, gift from a previous lover, painted when he was in junior high. A pot of black beans boils on the stove. Biscuits bake in the oven. Mom’s crocheted afghan drapes across the couch. Dad’s high-school wood-shop lamp lights the table. Paper and twigs: Family Tree , leaves twitch in the slightest stir, branch how we came to be born in this desert valley of poplar trees, temples, irrigation ditches, though we descend from fishermen in the fjords. Home— the golden egg—belongs only to you, to everyone. Solitude. Respite. Protection. Tapestry: white ink on green cloth, mass-produced Dalai Lama from a New Age reminds: Be kind . Whisper to every sun that has ever burned and will burn for all brothers and sisters to flourish in caves of dancing shadow. Acrylic on black velvet: dickered for around the fountain in Cuzco town square, Machu Picchu, from the band of boys pretending to be artists. This "kitchen sink" poem relies on couplets to control content, pacing, and enjambment, painting the cave. As a poem, "Painting the Cave" takes the simple idea of home into the breakthroughs that formed a part of 'interesting times." Previous SHAWN DALLAS STRADLEY grew up in Utah and California. He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from BYU, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Shawn began writing poetry at age 16. His mystical fascination with the natural world weaves throughout his work, and mixes with the urban. Shawn became active in the Utah poetry scene in 1997 and published his first full-length poetry book in 2003: Beyond October (Black Rock Books). Shawn has worked with poets and artists to produce chapbooks and a collaborative catalog for the art exhibit, The 9 Muses . Two chapbooks of Shawn's poetry were published in 2025 by Moon in the Rye Press, Fragile House and a group collaboration, When Cupboards Open . His poetry has been published by City Weekly , Exit 7 , Panorama , The New Era , Nine One One , The Poeming Pigeon , and My Kitchen Table. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue STILL LIFE WITH FLY Shawn Dallas Stradley Two concrete strips separated and edged by weeds run between red brick walls, past a corrugated steel garage door, bare lightbulb, crooked wood door, past the weed patch of leftover space at the end of the dead end. Why there's a garage door alongside the alley is a good question, no vehicle could make such a tight turn. Raised, the door provides ventilation, natural light. Closed, it secures. Inside, two dusty double-hung six- over-six divided light windows look out to morning glory, sow thistle, other brick walls, let in muted light, cast shadows. For consistency and night, a couple of flood lights on poles provide directed light, harsh and bare, or softened with a scrim. Tea cups, angel wings, fabric, rusty train shock springs, spoiled fruit, skulls––one human found in a basement among medical school training supplies, one cat found in the corner of the weed patch by the downspout, one beaver found by the river––old books, empty vodka, whiskey, wine bottles. Mason jars filled with marbles, fortunes, rocks, air, pennies, turpentine, thinner. Dolls' arms, radio tubes, bones––vertebrae, jaw, femurs from deer or cow––statues of saints, rosaries, forty-hour candles wrapped with prayers, used coffee filters, condom wrappers, a shopping cart, mannequin torso, the ball cap left by last Saturday night's trick, dead flowers. Stretched canvases lean against bare brick walls, too much accumulated amid the buzz of a single fly. The couch sags. Open beer flattens. There's not enough time to paint it all out, step back, take it all in. Turpentine rags stained crimson, violet, fern and blue, used to clean brushes, wipe up spills, unstain hands, litter the floor like jock-straps in a strip-club backroom––spontaneous, combustible. "Still Life with Fly" was published in Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art . The personal breakthrough in this poem was derived from the concept that the next thing always belongs. If that is true, then why not keep going, keep adding? So I did. I’ve always been fascinated with artists' studios, the mess, the clutter, the curiosities, all the bric-a-brac, the inspiration. To me, these spaces have always held an air of potential eroticism. It’s all so exciting? Based on my many studio visits over the years, I imagined and I wrote, and I brainstormed, and I kept writing, and adding. In this case, even the gradual increase in line length keeps building to the chaos, the clutter, the potential. After the additions though, there is always the work of revision, grammar, sentence construction, flow, enjambment. Are these tools helping to build, helping to hold together? In a "kitchen sink"-type poem, I believe they have to. Previous SHAWN DALLAS STRADLEY grew up in Utah and California. He holds a B.S. in Horticulture from BYU, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Shawn began writing poetry at age 16. His mystical fascination with the natural world weaves throughout his work, and mixes with the urban. Shawn became active in the Utah poetry scene in 1997 and published his first full-length poetry book in 2003: Beyond October (Black Rock Books). Shawn has worked with poets and artists to produce chapbooks and a collaborative catalog for the art exhibit, The 9 Muses . Two chapbooks of Shawn's poetry were published in 2025 by Moon in the Rye Press, Fragile House and a group collaboration, When Cupboards Open . His poetry has been published by City Weekly , Exit 7 , Panorama , The New Era , Nine One One , The Poeming Pigeon , and My Kitchen Table. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue SAFE GRAVY Alexandra van de Kamp —thanks to iPhone autocorrect I was trying to say safe travels I was trying to type to a sister boarding a plane, a sister with a sad way of arranging her face. I was trying to do justice to the August trees, to the way we drown in our thoughts a little each day. I’ve lost count of how many times list has become lust—bees became bras , and fees, frogs . I was trying to communicate my impressions: —the wind disco-ing between panic and glee —the articles on sloths I consume like piping hot Darjeeling tea. Did you know a sloth takes one month to digest a leaf? And I try not to mind when love becomes live because isn’t living a constant slipping? A to-ing and fro-ing around love, and its many misspellings? The other day, you became bayou —the self as a slow-moving, murky, and rather sloppy outlet. I had to pause a bit, consider the geography and humid ramifications of this. But I admit I must quibble when fibs in the news fiddle with their bibs, drooling on all of us with their vertiginous spit! Fib, fib, fib! This world a masterful whodunnit, with its hiccupping detectives and missing witnesses; its opaque, shifting definitions. And just now, my sister’s name, Vikki , was 'corrected' to bikini. And all I could think was of Gidget, the 1959 surfer movie starring Sandra Dee, and how, in a matter of 95 minutes, teen angst and major life decisions are solved along an endlessly stretching California beach. "Safe Gravy" was published in Jet Fuel Review. A breakthrough to discover that words based on an annoying feature of my cellphone could be a poem published in a journal I respect. Moreover, when I read this poem in public, it often makes people laugh, which affirms how much I enjoy introducing humor into poetry; it unlocks emotional terrain and thoughts I would not have otherwise expressed, and widens the poem's world. Previous ALEXANDRA VAN DE KAMP is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink , San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. She is the author of the poetry collections Ricochet Script (Next Page Press, 2022), Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press, 2016), and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (WordTech, 2010). alexandravandekamppoet.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue FIVE DAYS INTO THE NEW ADMINISTRATION Alexandra van de Kamp and I’m fluent in the words Executive Order, its acronym, EO, and, as a '60's kid, know it has little to do with Electric Light Orchestra , unless, by electric, we mean relentlessly on edge, veins aglitter with news-minnows. Five days into this new game show, and there’s already an eloquent, cascading disorder; an eddying, occupying flora overgrowing grasses and skies, fogging up our panes. Five days in, I’m looking at the squirrels, their bodies calligraphing the trees, for some philosophical tidbits, some wisdom outpacing my brain. I’m asking the clouds how they buoy despite their soggy weight. I’m renegotiating what feels safe. And today, safe feels like a shriveled postage stamp, running with ink. It feels like the overflowing clawfoot tub in a BBC mystery when the mother slits her wrists in the bath, expecting to be found—her blood a dark lily swaying in the water as her daughter arrives, witnesses what she’s done. Five days in, and I’m wondering: Am I this woman, misjudging the time I have left? I'm wanting a vaster, faster-reacting vocabulary for doubt and dread . What about lead-bout , hammered-heart , dead-gut ? And despite all this, here you are on a Saturday morning, wearing the bright blue pullover you said you'd never wear and drinking a second cup of coffee, anchored to our small history, our kitchen—my other voice, my trembling wind socket, my skin chime. "Five Days into the New Administration" was a breakthrough because I learned political anger could be channeled through a poem with playful aspects, like referencing Electric Light Orchestra while thinking of the onslaught of Executive Orders signed by the Trump Administration. I also saw that a political poem could have a certain elasticity and could include a scene from a BBC TV series to comment on the unfolding and highly disturbing political atmosphere. Lastly, writing this poem helped me find my voice in a challenging time. Previous ALEXANDRA VAN DE KAMP is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink , San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. She is the author of the poetry collections Ricochet Script (Next Page Press, 2022), Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press, 2016), and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (WordTech, 2010). alexandravandekamppoet.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue TIGHTENING SKATES Brock Dethier I gouge my numb index fingers under the stiff laces, pry for leverage, the tiniest bit of slack, jerk it through, knuckle the gain in place up sixty pairs of eyelets, Corey's, then Larkin's, then Tanner's, lower back scar bulging, knees wet from kneeling, jacket flecked with frozen spray kicked by kids' skates, and thank my mother in her ancient, thin parka, kneeling beside her mitten shells, tightening the first to get laced, the butt of each skate denting her thigh, hands blotched redwhite from cold, hoping her fingers will still obey and lace her own, give her a moment of grace to glide before the first one gets cold ears or needs retightening. Published in the collection, Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015) . I imagine most parents can relate to the kind of moment I capture in “Tightening Skates:” doing something for your kids makes you suddenly appreciate what your parents did for you when you were a kid. I don’t think I planned what’s now my favorite part of that poem—that it allows the mother briefly to glide away, free, something she had trouble doing in real life. Previous 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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue BECAUSE WE CAN Brock Dethier When asked why he was attempting to be the first to climb Mt. Everest, George Mallory said, “Because it’s there.” He died on Everest in 1924. It’s not because it’s there that we climb the highest mountain. It’s because we can. Adventurers know that our abilities can change instantly and will inevitably change slowly, so the climbing route, the powder line, the 20-knot windsurfing blow that you can just barely handle today will be beyond you tomorrow. I did 4000-foot-vertical hikes because I could. I ran every other day for thirty years, hating every step, because I could. I tried every drug that came my way, often more than once because I could. I skate skied up Green Canyon nonstop because I could, just barely. I swam underwater to the Green Room behind the travertine falls because I’d lost my mind. I can’t do any of those things now. Nor can I drive a golf ball out of sight, hit a forehand passing shot, or backpack nine miles into the Wind Rivers. Somehow when I wasn’t looking, my body’s motto went from “Whatever you need, whenever,” to “Nope, can’t.” What can my body still do that’s worth doing and I might well lose tomorrow? C’mere Babe. “Because We Can” is a new poem. I grew up with Mallory’s “Because it’s there” in my head, wondering what it meant and why I too embarked on pointless, dangerous adventures. The insight is of limited benefit to me now that I’m 73, and it might not make sense to someone who’s young enough to feel that there will always be another tomorrow. But understanding WHY we should seize the day was a breakthrough for me. Previous 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

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue THE OLD MAN AND THE FENCES Alex Barr To a man of eighty, a thousand-foot hill is Everest. I see it from my kitchen window, three miles away, featureless green sloping to an inscrutable summit, often attended like Bali Ha’i by low-flying cloud. Its name is Cilciffeth—no-one here in Wales knows what that means. I knew I had to face the trial of strength it offered. From a challenge ever before your eyes, there’s no escape. In my youth I ascended the highest peaks of England, Scotland, and Wales. It was hard to let go that version of myself. I thought I could take in a long road walk before the start of the bridleway up Cilciffeth. How often I’ve rushed into things without investigating the pitfalls. The road swung left invitingly and I ignored the smaller road straight on. I was soon lost. The map made no sense. At an isolated property, a not-too-friendly woman gave me confusing directions. A half mile on, exhausted, I aborted my mission. For my second attempt I parked much nearer. No wrong turning this time. I reached the B4313 road, and found the bridleway. I thought a bridleway was a path you can ride a horse on, but I wouldn’t have ridden on that one, more stream than path, dangerously uneven, hemmed in by overgrown hedges. I was attacked by horse botflies which left furuncular lesions and a swollen finger. I sat on a grassy mound and drank water. Further on, the path widened and a view of distant hills, patches of woodland, and scattered farmsteads opened up. I made my second stop, this time with coffee. My home-made lemon polenta cupcake was tempting, but I saved it. The day had warmed and I was glad I brought shorts to change into. Cilciffeth was now ahead on the right. The map showed its eastern flank outlined in brown, denoting ‘Access Land’ where you could walk at will. But access was denied by a steep bank topped by a barbed-wire fence. I thought of turning back, less through fatigue than a hopeless feeling, but the rhythm of my feet led me on until I saw an opening, amateurishly blocked with rusty pieces of gate. I climbed over. I was on Access Land. Without an obvious path to the summit, I had to trek through low gorse and grassy tussocks which threatened to turn my ankle. The thought of having to be recovered by air ambulance or mountain rescue unnerved me, and there was no cell phone signal. Go on, or turn back? The map showed the summit just half a mile away, but I had lost the ability to judge the effort needed to cross that irritating terrain. I went on, but halted every twenty yards or so to reconsider. Would ageing legs hold out? Imagining the shame of a second failure drove me on. Cilciffeth is one of those hills where the skyline keeps suggesting a summit, then offers more rising ground as you approach. The only landmark ahead was a group of scrubby trees. I headed for them. They seemed to get no nearer. I thought of my friend M, with whom I enjoyed many walks, and whose death left me diminished. What would he say? “Press on!” I pressed on. Then I saw the fence. I had noticed it on the map and feared it would block me, but was surprised to see a gate in it. Nevertheless I was very tired. I took off my backpack and flopped down. Could I retreat without dishonor? Had I earned more coffee and—at last—the cupcake? Magic! The sweet sticky substance revived me. I climbed the locked gate. An overgrown cart track led on. A slight rise to my right was the summit itself, but that was a distraction, because my main aim was to see the harbor town I lived in, and if possible, my house, reversing the view from the kitchen. I plodded on until I saw the long pale row of houses on the headland above the harbor, then the harbor itself. It was enough. I retraced my steps, not suspecting what lay ahead. The problem with a mountain is that if you lose the end of the path you reached the summit by, you may descend by a different path which takes you miles from your starting point. Walking down through what seemed the same gorse bushes and patches of burnt heather, I saw a gate. It wasn’t the opening where I had climbed over, but surely led onto the right bridleway further along? It seemed not. Not far along the path petered out. Now I had to climb locked gates, field after field, reached through waterlogged mud churned up by cattle. Between waves of panic, I felt surprising moments of calm. The result of years of meditation? Or the feeling that in old age nothing matters? My strength still hadn’t given out. But where was the B4313? The landscape of small hills and patches of woodland was no different from that near my starting point, except in the details. After several more gates I saw a respectable-looking road in the distance. It curved round a hill, gently rising—and completely unfamiliar. There were no more gates. Now I had to climb hedgebanks topped with barbed wire fences. Then—a sign my hiking days were over?—the sole of my right boot came off. And yet I still felt calm. These obstacles were taking all my concentration. At last I reached a road. I’ve often arrived at well-known places from an unfamiliar angle, making them strange. To my surprise, a sign read B4314! It was the same road that went on to curve around a hill. I noted surrounding landmarks and checked the map. I had reached the B4314 a mile-and-a-half from where the bridleway joined it. A Hopalong Cassidy route march lay ahead. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. At the limit of my strength, I reached the car. I had conquered Cilciffeth. "The Old Man and the Fences" was published in 2024 in New Isles Press Issue 3, “Border Teorainn Mairch” in Northern Ireland. The story tells of a physical challenge and ordeal overcome by a man of eighty, spurred on by a memory of what his oldest friend would say. Previous ALEX BARR 's publications include two short fiction collections and three poetry collections, the most recent of which is Light and Dark (Kelsay Books, 2024) . He is assembling a collection of nonfiction. alexbarr.co.uk Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue FROM COTTON TO WOOL ... and Beyond Alex Barr It was the worst year of my youth, and who did I end up working for? That blustering mountebank Aeneas Kelly.* When we first met, I was a bus conductor. The job was meant to fill the summer vacation between second and third years at university, but now there was no third year. I had dropped out. For a year I had endured a weird eye disorder with no physical cause, which made reading almost impossible. Because it was labelled ‘psychosomatic,’ I was having psychiatric treatment. This consisted of an hour a week lying drugged alone in a small room spouting rubbish and taking mysterious red and blue pills. My fiancée was cooling on me and would soon break off our engagement—not that I blame her. The Garrick, an amateur theater in my hometown of Stockport in the North of England, said I had to spend a year working in the scene dock before I could audition for a part, so no relief there. Aeneas did public relations for my father, who ran a laboratory researching felt for hats. I don’t know why a competent, self-sufficient scientist like Dad needed such a charlatan to promote his work. But by 1960, few men wore fedoras, so maybe he worried about his future. He certainly worried about mine, which was why he arranged the job with Aeneas. Trainee management consultant, office junior, gopher? My role was never defined. I still see Aeneas enter the office, weary from some expedition. He looked like a cross between Nikita Khrushchev and Danny DeVito—round head, chunky body. He would put down his briefcase, stand hunched in his black wool overcoat, and sigh heavy exhalations which blew out his top lip. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, but it seemed life wasn’t treating him fairly. There were four strands to his organization: management consultancy, light engineering, PR, and ‘research facilities,’ whatever they were. He had been ‘in cotton’ all his working life and now had an office in Manchester’s Royal Exchange, ten miles from my hometown. When that office oppressed me, I would hurry down to the vast empty floor where cotton was once traded, and study the display—like a giant scoreboard—of the last day’s figures. An elegant theater now occupies that floor, and playgoers can still see that relic of ‘Cottonopolis.’ Ah, Cottonopolis. Back then in 1960 the title was fading. In the city of dark satanic mills and gritty businessmen, replacing old machinery was uneconomical and labour was cheaper in the East. Maybe there was bad karma from the blockade-running days when Manchester needed slave-produced cotton from the Confederacy, even though the workers, despite being laid off, supported the Union. But I cared for none of this. The red and blue pills made me bovine and apathetic. I dated a few girls but must have seemed halfhearted, so nothing gelled. I was still in love with my fiancée. The office number was one more than her house number, so I felt fate had thrust me away from her. My work with Aeneas felt like a penance for failure. He sent me to a dismal trading estate, to a factory where pressure vessels were lined with lead. He had devised a Byzantine bonus system for the workers which he wanted me to understand. He also wanted me to learn the rudiments of estimating lead-lining, to the annoyance of the head estimator, who complained, “You’re training as a management consultant, Barr, not an estimator!” But there was worse to come. In Aeneas’s company prospectus, with its glowing assurance of splendid service, was the sentence All our employees are graduates. So to save the phenomena, he said I had to finish my abandoned physics degree. The red and blue pills left me no energy to resist. In a grim classroom at the College of Technology in Manchester’s sooty twin town of Salford, I experienced what T.S. Eliot calls “the rending pain of re-enactment.” I lasted a few weeks. The eye problem lingered. I still couldn’t leap the hurdles of quantum theory and vectors. And anyway, I realized the prospectus was false. It conjured up a bustling headquarters out in the Cheshire countryside packed with graduates, the Manchester office being but a branch, but whenever I phoned the alleged HQ to relay a message, the same voice answered: that of a middle-aged woman who sounded (was it my imagination?) less receptionist than housewife. The red and blue pills made me sleepy and I was glad when Aeneas went out so I could doze in his inner sanctum. I sometimes woke with a start when he returned from an outing. (He reminded me of that when our relationship reached its dénouement.) On one expedition, he found a small machine for printing information on the ends of spools of cotton thread. He bought the patent and sent me to buy oil-filled bearings. A mildly spoken middle-aged engineer appeared, commissioned to take the machine and build more like it. Meanwhile Aeneas sent me to a printing-ink firm to ask whether we could print several spools from one charge. (Why?) I was told printing ink is designed to release in one go. I heard no more about the project. He gave me a weird task I was too compliant to resist, which in these days of photocopiers, office printers, and word programs seems medieval. I had to type identical letters to mill owners, inviting them to buy a tension meter for warp threads on looms. A most inefficient process, and I was no great typist. After I produced dozens of letters he sent me to sell the machine. The idea was to place it against a warp thread, pull the trigger, and read the dial. A mill owner tried it, the thread broke, and he said mildly, “It’s no bloody use.” I had no answer. When I reported back, Aeneas just grunted. Another project I heard no more of. He turned to cotton converting—buying raw woven cotton and finishing it. I thought I would see him bleach fabric to make lighter colors, starch it for body and shine, mercerize it with sodium hydroxide to strengthen the fibers, calendar (industrial iron) it, and even print it with colorful patterns. A nattily dressed Egyptian appeared with his charming wife, and Aeneas took the couple to lunch. A few weeks later, a hefty roll of raw fabric four-and-a-half feet long was deposited in the inner sanctum. There it stayed the rest of my time there. The cloth was full of end-breaks, little knots where broken warp threads had been tied. Egypt, it seemed, had need of the tension meter. There was also the novel. Aeneas told me, “In 1939 I had a play about to go on in the West End. The war killed it.” His latest oeuvre was handwritten in those familiar six-by-four exercise books with shiny red covers and avoirdupois weights on the back. Thanks to my limited typewriter skills he had employed a secretary, a modest young woman from the West of Ireland, and asked her to type it. If her Catholic sensibilities were disturbed by the hero “exploring the welts of Miss Jones’s stockings” as prelude to sex, she gave no sign. I sneaked a look. There was something familiar about it. The characters worked for an organization offering management consultancy, light engineering, PR, and research facilities. I don’t know what became of the novel. The Irish secretary left and was replaced by a girl I dated—until she ditched me because I laughed at finding her hair full of hairpins. And because I squeezed her breast (this being the pre-pill purgatory of the early sixties). I never explored the welts of her stockings. Cotton failed to satisfy so Aeneas turned to wool. In my pill-induced stupor I didn’t realize this transition would change my life, and that after drudgery as a pupa I could take wing. My boss had spotted an opportunity. One of his PR clients made shrink-resistant woolen garments. He decided to start a magazine promoting the entire wool industry, with backing from the Wool Industries Research Association, Bradford Dyers Association, makers of industrial dryers, and anyone else he could lure in, while sneaking his clients in under their skirts. The Wool Record and Textile World was the technical voice of the industry—this new magazine would be the trumpet (or puff) of hope. He sent me across the Pennine Hills to sell advertising space to hard-headed Bradford wool men. I don’t think he expected results (and there were none), just wanted me to know it’s a tough world out there. Back in the office I practiced writing articles. One exercise was to explain the manufacture of terry cloth, another to describe the contents of a fashion brochure. I struggled with words that seemed uncontrollable and felt waves of panic in case my eyesight let me down, but at last felt the satisfaction of a piece coming together. I learned to choose typefaces, lay out pages, edit text to fit them, create halftone and line blocks, use Ben Day dots, crop photographs, and deal with a printing firm. Something in me woke up despite the pills. I tried to imagine living in Bradford and decided the first thing I would do would be to join a drama group. I passed my driving test and borrowed Dad’s car to take girls I dated to dances at the Winter Gardens in Buxton. With one girl the relationship even lasted several months, and only fizzled when a letter from my ex unsettled me. It came from Switzerland where she was a courier for a travel firm. She asked whether I remembered early mornings when we went jogging together. My reply saying I still loved her probably landed after she left the hotel. Would arriving in time have made it alter my destiny? I doubt it. Much later, in a letter saying she was about to marry, she wrote, “I had all the time I was in Switzerland to think about it.” Aeneas’s wool magazine arrived from the printers looking good. Fate was on my side when I ran into an old pal from my days in the Scouts. (His nickname Elzy was short for Beelzebub, I have no idea why.) He showed me a book called How to Get a Better Job . I took its advice and applied to be an editorial assistant on a technical magazine in London. Preparing for the interview I sat in the echoing rotunda of Manchester Central Library and studied a copy. The title was in a font called Chisel which has an air of reliability. Chisel is rarely seen today, but a local boatyard uses it and it brings back the excitement of those days. I showed the wool magazine at the interview and got the job. When I returned Aeneas was furious. “You’ve done nowt for me except fall asleep!” “I’ve produced a good magazine for you.” “Get out. Now !” So I went. I’m grateful to Aeneas for starting my career in journalism, which reached its zenith four years later when I was wire editor of The Wichita Beacon (after which I became an architect). And for memories: the din of a shed full of power looms, the twitching of the leather straps driving the shuttles, and the tang of hot oil, the scent of lanolin in a wool-combing shed in Bradford, and other sights, sounds, smells, and personalities of a vanishing textile empire. I don’t know what happened to the wool magazine. I don’t know when Dad ended his PR contract, and it’s too late to ask. I discover that Aeneas died in North Wales in 1981. Calling him a blustering mountebank and charlatan is unfair—like him, I’ve had projects and plays come to nothing, I too scribble in notebooks and indulge in fantasies, and I often sigh blowing out my top lip. When I moved to London I was given the lead in an amateur production of The Winter’s Tale . Quite a change from The Garrick. At the same drama group I met my future (and present) wife, who urged me off the pills. My ex faded into the past without regret. I remember that on the train to that interview in London I read Peyton Place, in which a character says moving to a different city makes you a different person. It does. *Not his real name, but with the same flavor. This memoir records my transition from academic failure, a broken romance, and despair to a breakthrough into hope, a rewarding new career, and a new lasting love affair. Previous ALEX BARR 's publications include two short fiction collections and three poetry collections, the most recent of which is Light and Dark (Kelsay Books, 2024) . He is assembling a collection of nonfiction. alexbarr.co.uk Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue NO MORE BLOWS David Romtvedt First the dog died and we pulled the sledge ourselves. A couple of centuries later a wheel fell off the cart and another millennium gone by, the pistons started to knock, rings worn, fuel to air mix off. When they landed, the aliens promised peace beyond understanding. You think a civilization able to cross space and time can fix anything, think again. In the end it was, “Sorry, we’ve done all we can,” stepping back into their ship and closing the door, tears in their eyes. That was a surprise, seeing the aliens cry. As a child, if I cried, my father beat me, saying, as so many fathers before him have said, “You wanta cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.” Confused, I came to hate not what he’d done to me, but crying. Later, I too was a father. When my daughter, suffering from severe colic, cried, I wanted to strike out, not knowing at what, having worked so hard to forget my childhood, afraid I might hit my daughter as my father had hit me. I turned away and left the house, walking across the frozen lake, the windblown surface free of snow, the fish moving silently beneath my feet. Sometimes in the cold, things come clear— my daughter cried and I heard my father’s ragged breathing, recoiled from his blow, but this time I stepped aside, and never again feared I might hit my child. In understanding why my daughter’s or anyone’s crying so disturbed me, I was to some degree freed from my father’s blows and so never again feared that I might lose control and hit my daughter. I also understood that the aliens had to leave, that no outside force could solve my problems. Finally, I accepted that even if I were not ruled by the association between tears and being beaten that I’d made in childhood, crying might always make me uncomfortable. Previous DAVID ROMTVEDT is from northern Wyoming. His most recent books are Still on Earth (LSU Press, 2025) and Forest of Ash: The Earliest Written Basque Poetry (Center for Basque Studies Press, 2024). davidromtvedt.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue TO MAKE IT NOW David Romtvedt Grandma stands in the kitchen, still alive. Her first man died in the twenties, forty years later the second went the same way. She stays alive so we celebrate another birthday halfway through her eighties the year I turn thirty. On the lawn her second son plays volleyball with his own grown children. Her eldest son, my father, watches and makes loud jokes. Like we expect when we come to this city, it rains. Everyone plays on, slightly damp. Later there’s a kind of horseshoes with giant darts and a plastic ring. We eat heavy American Food and sit in lawn chairs or on benches at borrowed tables. One grandson brings his two children but not their mother. The aunts call him brave to raise these children by himself, a man alone. Grandma loves her great-grandchildren, their tiny eyes and hands. All afternoon she drinks bourbon and water. I have made my retreat to the kitchen where I wash dishes. My aunt thanks me. Of course it is I who must give thanks. Grandma comes in wanting another drink, aware that now some whisper she shouldn’t. “But why not,” she asks, “Why shouldn’t an old lady drink if she wants?” She tells me I am good and wonders if I think it bad she drinks. I have no answer but pour out more bourbon and wash more dishes. She comes close to me and puts her arm in mine. How odd that I would grow up a poet. My mother has shown her a poem for my other grandmother, dead fifteen years before. “A lovely poem,” she says, “I had to read it twice. I didn’t understand at first how a woman could be a bird or a tree, then the second time I saw what you meant.” I am grateful to her for this and we are quiet. With so many people there are plenty of dishes. Then she says my name, tells me she too would like a poem, that would be something. Grandma sets her glass on the counter asking if I can write a poem before a person is dead? I rinse the soap off my hands and promise I will. “To Make It Now” originally appeared in the Crab Creek Review and in the book A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (Copper Canyon Press, 1992) , a selection of the National Poetry Series. Fifteen years after my maternal grandmother’s death I wrote a poem for her, which my mother sent to my paternal grandmother who then asked if I could write a poem for her, too, but before she died. I had no idea what to write and told the story of this request to an older poet I knew and admired who smiled and said, “But you see, don’t you, that’s the poem right there, the story you just told me.” In writing it down, I began to think in a new way about the making of a poem. Previous DAVID ROMTVEDT is from northern Wyoming. His most recent books are Still on Earth (LSU Press, 2025) and Forest of Ash: The Earliest Written Basque Poetry (Center for Basque Studies Press, 2024). davidromtvedt.com Next