The Worrier by Nancy Takacs Now that you are her, what will you do? I’ll walk across the swinging bridge and light a clove cigarette. How will you roam? I’ll drive a Packard convertible, my man in a long dark coat beside me. In the countryside, where will you land, and what will you eat? We’ll find a bar in northern Wisconsin. We won’t eat. What are you wearing, and what do you look like? An indigo dress, a little black cloche. I’ve outlined my lips to look like a sweet maroon bow. What songs will you sing? “Heart of My Heart” And “I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.” Who will know you better than anyone? My silk chemise. What undergarments do you wear? None. What tree do you wear instead? The plum. Why? Because it’s a palm full of dusk. What word will you use? Flagrant. It’s time for this. Where does the word go? It rises from under my bare feet when I leave the beach. What is strange about you now? There is nothing strange. What is common? I have loved the first light. Where does the light go? It goes under the letters in captions of what I say. Where does the scent go? It goes into my eyes, my mouth, the way I turn my head so that you will imagine lilacs. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue Initially printed in The Tampa Review and The Worrier: Poems (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). I guess this poem is a favorite of mine, as it’s the first Worrier poem I wrote, and it called me back to write more Worriers, that became a book. I like the film star because she is strong, even though she is, in a sense, voiceless. However, in the poem, she has a voice. She takes charge of where she is going, is confident about her choices, and plays with the reader a bit. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NANCY TAKACS is an avid boater, hiker, and mushroom forager. She lives near the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in northern Wisconsin, and in the high-desert town of Wellington, Utah. Her latest book of poems is Dearest Water . nancytakacs.org Next - Junk Email by Nancy Takacs Next

Before Thirty by Patrick Ramsay I streak through a golf course in nectarine light and self-destruct a little bit. Not in a Salamander Letter type of way, but like an old truck whose engine blows right after the warranty is up. I cancel the party. Detonate my relationship. Call in sick. Call my old therapist with the tattoos. Ask him if he’s still engaged. Send up a flare. Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize the word hello and help are one autocorrect away from twinhood. I kiss everyone. Kiss goodbye to my savings account. Greet one thousand new hobbies with the fervor of a young dog. Tongue out. I only have so much time left to be reckless in my twenties. I was twenty-eight the first time a twink told me he loves older guys. This. This is why all the queens call thirty gay death. I feel too young, too childless, too cut loose to be someone’s daddy. But maybe he was right. My mortgage, the chicken coop, the poodle-mutt rescue dog. I used to be stupid. Gloriously, aimlessly stupid. But at some point along the way: A bungalow, a career, a real live-with-me, go-to-weddings-and-farmers-markets-together partner. Someone must have tricked me. Tricked me into learning what a 401k is. What a deductible is. How to become interested in interest rates. I’m going to be sick. Sick and grown up forever. And thirty is a perfectly fine age. It’s the death of the I did this in my twenties thing that I’m mourning. Who damned me to grow up this fast? To man before I really was done boying. This is the part where I’m supposed to assure you that a job can be a dream, and mowing your own lawn, also a dream. But gut laughs, mushroom trips, occasional sex with strangers—also, also a dream. I know I know, that growing older grows on you, but youth is a temporary meadow with soft scruff, and I guess this is the long way of saying I’m afraid of losing something I didn’t know was worth anything. Anyway, call me when you get this. Need to borrow your drill again. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue This unpublished poem came out fully formed, like a platypus frog or a nervous confession. I was one week from turning thirty and wrestling with what that meant. As a gay man, aging is such a prickly arena, and many men treat thirty like a sunset of their dewy youth. This poem reflects on all the glorious stupidities of my twenties and what it means to realize (maybe a little too late) that you might just have become a man before you were really done boying. And I still don’t own a drill. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PATRICK RAMSAY is a queer poet & owner of the indie shop Happy Magpie Book & Quill. He explores land, community & heart in Ogden, Utah. patrickramsaypoet.com Next - Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room by Paul Fericano Next

Sinatra, Sinatra by Paul Fericano Sexual reference: a protruding sinatra is often laughed at by serious women. Medical procedure: a malignant sinatra must be cut out by a skilled surgeon. Violent persuasion: a sawed-off sinatra is a dangerous weapon at close range. Congressional question: Do you deny the charge of ever being involved in organized sinatra? Prepared statement: Kiss my sinatra. Blow it out your sinatra. Financial question: Will supply-side sinatra halt inflation? Empty expression: The sinatra stops here. The sinatra is quicker than the eye. Strategic question: Do you think it’s possible to win a limited nuclear sinatra? Stupid assertion: Eat sinatra. Hail Mary full of sinatra. Serious reflection: Sinatra this, sinatra that. Sinatra do, sinatra don’t. Sinatra come, sinatra go. There’s no sinatra like show sinatra. Historical question: Is the poet who wrote this poem still alive? Biblical fact: Man does not live by sinatra alone. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue “Sinatra, Sinatra” was responsible for cementing (pun intended) my so-called reputation as a social and political satirist. Being an outlaw member of a poetry scene that seemed to have little interest in, or understanding of, the art of satire, I was constantly pushing myself and the envelope. The poem, a takedown of extreme conservative politics that used Sinatra’s name in vain, was completed in early 1982 after many drafts. The poem actually managed to attract the attention of Frank Sinatra and get under his skin (again, pun intended). It provoked some poetry lovers to dismiss me and the poem outright (this was, after all, the Reagan era). But it also motivated many others who didn’t really read poems to actually read mine. This favorite was the lynchpin for the 1982 Howitzer Prize, a literary hoax that mocked the absurdity of all competitive awards. After the intended target (Poets & Writers) was hit dead center, I dutifully exposed the hoax myself. This caused the usual righteous indignation and predictable blacklisting. But the overwhelming support of those who clearly got the message (and the joke) was all the more satisfying. .................................................................................................................................................................................... PAUL FERICANO is the author of Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance (Poems-For-All Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Bulitzer Prize. yunews.com Next - Sacrament Meeting Started the Three Hours of Church on Sunday by Natalie Padilla Young Next

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

The Gospel of Overconsumption by Scott Abbott Saturday, August 26, 2023 The Salt Lake City Public Library auditorium is packed to overflowing this morning. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson has invited the public to a conversation about Terry Tempest Williams’ essay, “I Am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake,” published in The New York Times . We greet the discussants with warm applause as they step onto the stage: Mayor Wilson, Terry Tempest Williams, and my son Ben Abbott. Mayor Wilson describes the Sunday morning she found Terry’s essay in the Times . “My husband and I had a brunch date with friends. It’s going to have to wait, I told him. You can’t imagine what I’m reading.” She turns to Terry. “Would you tell us how your Times piece came about?” "The catalyst," Terry replies, “was the report published on January 4 of this year titled ‘Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse.’ Ben Abbott, BYU professor of ecology, was the lead author, with an impressive list of co-authors. Their scientific analysis was picked up in The Washington Post and other news outlets, including The New York Times. I know Great Salt Lake intimately; still, the report shocked me. I contacted Ben and asked if we could talk. A short visit lengthened to a four-hour conversation. Then a Times editor emailed me: Would I write something about the crisis? I sent her a 2000-word reply, confident she wouldn’t have time to read it. She read it. I began to write.” Terry unfurls the Sunday Review section of the Times , dated March 26, 2023. Accompanied by Fazal Sheikh’s beautiful, ominous photographs of the lake, the piece fills page after page. “Tell us more about the photographer,” Mayor Wilson requests. “Fazal Sheikh is a friend of mine, “Terry says. “We have worked on several environmental projects together, including one related to Bears Ears National Monument. I asked if he would contribute some recent photos of Great Salt Lake. He was hesitant. His work is collected in major museums of art, not really the stuff for newspapers. I reminded him that more people would see his work in this Times piece than would ever see it in person. Plus, I said, you really love Great Salt Lake; together we can do something for her. And so we did.” Terry raises a bundle of ten or twelve drafts of the essay, the work of the ensuing weeks. “The day the piece was to go to print,” Terry continues, “the editor sent me a final copy w ith my work stripped of feminine personal pronouns in reference to Great Salt Lake. They also took exception to my describing her as ‘my Mother Lake.’ This is not what we agreed, I told the editor. My body and the body of Great Salt Lake are one. You have separated us. Our style guide requires this, the editor replied. Then perhaps you should revise your style guide, I said. You understand that we’re going to press in a few hours! Not with my piece in this form. Give me a couple of minutes, the editor said. S he returned: we’ll do it your way.” In Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place , Terry’s cancer-assaulted mother and the lake and bird refuge overwhelmed by too much water are melded into a narrative drawing wisdom and solace from two mothers. The Times editor balked at the personification. That much-maligned trope, I think, can be revelatory. A couple of years ago, my friend of three decades, poet Alex Caldiero, visited volcanos in Italy and Sicily, seeking the physical presence of what he considered living beings. “I talked with fishermen at the docks overshadowed by Stromboli,” he told me. “Stromboli is our father, they said, powerful and strict. He tells us when to fish, where to fish, when the season begins and ends. If we follow the rules, everything is fine. When we don’t, there’s hell to pay. In Sicily, however, people describe Aetna as a nurturing mother who provides the best soil and lava rock for building. And when I asked about Vesuvius in Pompeii, people just laughed. He’s a monstrous, trickster uncle who can’t be trusted in any situation.” “Folklore,” Alex concluded, “gets to the souls of things.” Mayor Wilson turns to Ben. "Professor Abbott, tell us how your report came together?” When Ben is introduced as Professor Abbott, my mind spirals back to the moment I too was introduced as Professor Abbott on this very stage. It was October 7, 2005, the evening of Alex’s epic 50th Anniversary performance of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Sponsored by Ken Sanders Rare Books, the event packed the auditorium and filled overflow rooms with another 700 eager participants. The Will Lovell Quintet performed 50s-vintage jazz. Poets Ken Brewer, Andy Hoffmann, Sara Caldiero, Melissa Bond, Jean Howard, Sandy Anderson, and Paul Swenson sat in a semicircle behind the podium, as had poets Philip Lamantia, Mike McClure, Gary Snyder, and Phil Whalen at San Francisco’s 6 Gallery for the October 7, 1955 premiere of “Howl.” Lamantia later likened Ginsberg’s reading to “bringing two ends of an electrical wire together.” “Professor Scott Abbott,” Ken Sanders announced, “will give us a sense for that historical event.” I approached the podium, looked out over the audience, and protested: “Professor, my ass!” When Mayor Wilson refers to Ben as Professor, it makes sense, I tell myself. It’s a marker of Ben’s scientific credentials. But when I protested the moniker “professor” on this stage, the context was different. Ken Sanders’ brilliance doesn’t owe itself to a college degree. In fact, he once told our Utah Valley University students that he was a little nervous because the last time he had been in a classroom was in his junior year in high school when he and the principal agreed it would be in their shared best interests if Ken never returned to school. Alex sat in poet Norman Pritchard’s course at The New School but also cites his informal apprenticeship with sculptor Michael Lekakis as formative. At breakfast the morning after my friend and coauthor Žarko Radaković and I attended the premier of Peter Handke’s play Voyage by Dugout in Vienna’s Burgtheater, Handke asked what we thought of the play. I started to describe how skillfully I thought the play employed an actual experience the three of us had had in Višegrad during the civil wars that disintegrated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Doktor Scott , Handke broke in, Doktor Scott . . . always on the job! I am indeed a professor. I’m proud of that. But my nonacademic creative work is meaningful to me in its own way. Although she founded the graduate program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah, I don’t think of Terry as Professor Williams, but as Terry Tempest Williams, author. And beyond his scientific credentials, I know Ben as an extraordinary back-country skier, as a mountain biker excelling in hundredmile winter races outside Fairbanks, Alaska, as a gifted and soulful singer, as the profoundly generous father of four of my grandchildren, as the inquisitive young man who, carrying his pack into class during his unhoused second year at Utah State University, responded to his professor’s “that looks heavy!” with “not as heavy as what you are carrying.” Professor Doktor Ben Abbott responds to the Mayor’s request: “Our 2021 report on the Utah Lake ecosystem,” he says, “was a scientific critique of the attempt by ‘Lake Restoration Solutions’ to monetize Utah Lake by dredging and filling the lake with islands. In response, the developers filed a three-milliondollar defamation suit against me. Our science eventually won out and resulted in the demise of the real estate scheme.” Ben listed me as a co-author on the Utah Lake report—"Dr. Scott Abbott”—my contribution a thorough editing. "Dr." feels just right in that case. Identity is complicated. When the would-be island builders served Ben with a SLAPP suit, my co-author of Wild Rides and Wildflowers , Sam Rushforth and I congratulated him for the accomplishment. “Our environmental and academic activism has never attracted a SLAPP suit,” we lamented. “You have leapfrogged over us.” In 2016, Terry and Brooke Williams bid on two oil and gas leases offered by the BLM, planning to develop the leases only when “science supports a sustainable use of the oil and gas at an increased value given the costs of climate change to future generations.” The BLM rejected their bid, and the ensuing public response led to Terry leaving the University of Utah to accept a position as writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School where she offers a course on spirituality and Great Salt Lake. “For our next project,” Ben continues, “we decided to study Great Salt Lake, threatened, as it is, by drought and overconsumption of water. Contributors to the work included scientists and advocates from six universities, four nonprofits, and three working ecology professionals. Six BYU students contributed to the report, s did ten BYU faculty and staff members across five colleges. I don’t say that to brag about BYU, but to point out that universities in general are institutions structured to facilitate this kind of interdisciplinary problem solving. We wanted to post the report before the mid-January beginning of the state legislative session, so many of us spent Christmas break developing and refining the work. We concluded that excessive water use is destroying Great Salt Lake, that the lake is on track to disappear in five years, and that the consequences of losing the lake will be drastic. Our report, published on January 4th, called on the Governor and the legislature to take immediate action.” Bn pauses eand Terry breaks in: “Ben, your activism on our behalf is much appreciated, but the stress from your work is immense. You are so skinny! You’ve got to eat more steak.” “Thank you, Professor Abbott,” Mayor Wilson says with a big smile, “and thank you Terry Tempest Williams. We now invite questions from the audience.” Someone notes that alfalfa is the region’s biggest consumer of water. “What can be done to limit alfalfa growth?” “We all have family or friends whose livelihoods depend on growing alfalfa,” Ben says. “Any actions we make must take them into account.” He follows with a detailed description of possible solutions, including federal and state legislation that compensates farmers for losses and protects farmers who temporarily give up water rights. “All solutions to this problem,” he reminds us, “require trust. We must ensure financial, legal, and professional support for farmers during this transition.” Scott Carrier, sitting next to me, a wonderfully skilled narrator himself, whispers that Ben just ended his extended elaboration at exactly the same place he started. “How old is he?” “I’m not sure,” I answer. He looks at me askance. “How has this winter’s heavy snow affected the lake?” “I see the winter storms as acts of divine intervention,” Ben says, “a gift of time to remedy the situation ourselves. The only way to accomplish that will be to convert or shame promoters of the gospel of overconsumption.” "Divine intervention, my ass!" I whisper to Scott Carrier. "It's all good," he responds. I don't know anyone who can speak to scientists, legislators, and Mormons like Ben can. Whatever will spur people to action.” Another member of the audience says he heard Ben say in an interview that if we would only grow food for humans to eat and not food for animals that we then eat, that would solve the water problem. “I had a good response to the question,” Ben says, “but Terry just suggested that I needed to eat more steak. What can I say? My faith tradition,” he continues, “tells us that we should only eat meat when it is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, most of us don’t pay much attention to that.” In her Times piece, Terry also invokes her religious upbringing: Utah is my home. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints raised me to care about community in the fullness of Creation. We were taught through sacred texts, “The Pearl of Great Price,” among them: “For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth.” Great Salt Lake had a spirit before she had a body. Brine shrimp have a spirit. White pelicans and eared grebes have a spirit. They are loved by God as we are loved. Like Terry and Ben, I grew up in and developed an identity shaped by Mormon culture. One day, however, walking across the campus of Princeton University, a thought stopped me short: I don’t believe in God. That is still the case forty-some years later. Heavy snow through divine intervention? A lake with a spirit loved by God? What’s an atheist to do with this sort of thinking? Over the decades, I’ve learned to respect and to respond to Alex’s mysticism as metaphor. I don’t have to believe to find the ideas and images powerful. I’ll wear my atheism lightly in the presence of Ben and Terry, a man and a woman motivated and inspired by their own forms of belief. Spinoza’s Deus sive natura (“God or Nature”) and “Nature’s God” as enshrined in our Enlightenment-inspired Declaration of Independence will be my creeds. Mayor Wilson asks for final thoughts: “What can we do?” Terry and Ben both recommend that we press our federal and state legislators for concerted action. Ben lists specific legislative actions, recommends tiered water pricing, and asks that businesses, churches, and nonprofits work together in the service of Great Salt Lake. Terry ends the discussion by reading a passage from her Times essay: On the surface of the lake, small waves broke toward shore, creating salt lines, but beneath the water’s surface there appeared to be an undertow, an inner tide pulling water back toward the center. If Great Salt Lake is in retreat . . . She stops reading here, looks up, and repeats the word “retreat.” “ As a writer,” she says, “I know my own vocabulary. At this point something entered my mind that was not mine. I believe it was the lake, and what I heard her say was: ‘I am in retreat and it is not what you think.’” Terry returns to her text: If Great Salt Lake is in retreat, perhaps she is holding her breath, as do we who worry about her prognosis. To retreat, to withdraw momentarily to garner strength and perspective, can be a strategy. Retreat can be a conscious action: a period of time called for to pray and study quietly, to think carefully and regain one’s composure . . . to commit to a different way of being, to change one’s beliefs. How, I wonder as I leave the auditorium, does such committment arise? What can induce a change in beliefs? What might replace a gospel of overconsumption? At SITE Santa Fe this summer, art critic and historian Lucy Lippard co-curated a show titled Going with the Flow: Art, Action, and Western Waters. She argues that in times of crisis “artists can expose the social agendas that have formed the land.” Writers and scientists like Terry and Ben lead us toward re-forming our relationship to Great Salt Lake and its watershed. What form that takes will reveal who we are. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue “The Gospel of Overconsumption” was commissioned by Torrey House Press for a book on Great Salt Lake meant for Utah legislators who have and will be considering ways to conserve the lake. When someone realized that it might not be just the righthing for that audience, I received a gracious rejection letter. I’m pleased it has found a home in THE NOMAD. .................................................................................................................................................................................... SCOTT ABBOTT completed a doctorate in German Studies at Princeton University and is a professor of Integrated Studies, Philosophy, and Humanities at Utah Valley University. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger. (Common Consent Press, 2022). He has translated works by Nobel Prize Awardee Peter Handke and botanist Gregor Mendel. scottabbottauthor.com Next - Tiananmen Mother by Michael Wells Next

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize Anthology Best of the Small Presses From Issue 1 "July" by Shannan Ballam "Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room" by Paul Fericano "Missa Brevis" by Kimberly Johnson "The Little House: Crystal City, Texas" by Jeff Talmadge From Issue 2 "Knotted Wrack" by Maureen Clark "Storms, Maybe a Metaphor for Us" by Kase Johnston Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link

Hiroshi Tanahashi by Jerry VanIeperen echoes travel across the icy sea foam in cherry blossom sundown the Dome crowd quakes Hiroshi Tanahashi leaps from the top rope falling in love, frog-splashed against the mat in magnitudes in cherry blossom sundown the Dome crowd quakes Tanahashi wasn’t born a constellation falling in love, frog-splashed against the mat in magnitudes all the neon signs illuminate the borders of ropes Tanahashi never born a constellation when the world swoons in uncharted patterns of lava and stars all the neon signs illuminate the borders of ropes the sweat and spectacle captured in a camera’s eye when the world swoons in uncharted patterns of lava and stars Hiroshi Tanahashi leaps from the top rope the sweat and spectacle captured in a camera’s eye Tanahashi echoes a constellation over the icy sea Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue I arrived at a point of liberation where I decided I was going to write poetry about pro wrestling—former Utah Poet Laureate David Lee said that may be the greatest oxymoron of his time, which I took as encouragement. I watched wrestling with my grandpa, it was the topic that got me back in touch with a dear friend after years apart, and it was also common ground, for a time, I shared with my son. So, it’s fairly meaningful to me, and I’m especially proud of how this poem about a Japanese pro wrestler turned out. .................................................................................................................................................................................... JERRY VANIEPEREN lives heartily in Utah with two children, two dogs, and one wife. He earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska and was a founding editor of the poetry journal Sugar House Review . Next - Pissing Towards the Sky by Jerry VanIeperen Next

THE NOMAD is a nonprofit literary magazine dedicated to writers exploring journeys through a changing world. First Issue ................................................................................................................................................................................. "FAVORITES" - 2024/2025 Siren - poem The Lure of the Unfinished -poem ..................................................................................... by Amy Gerstler Reading -poem Gradual - poem ..................................................................................... by Natasha Sajé You Oughta Know - poem The Black Flies of Home - poem ..................................................................................... by Brock Dethier Fireflies - poem Automotive - poem ..................................................................................... by Kevin Prufer 11/8/16 - poem Tuesday Night Bieber - essay ..................................................................................... by Joe Sacksteder Hiroshi Tanahashi - poem Pissing Toward the Sky - poem ..................................................................................... by Jerry VanIeperen Alien Exchange Program - Host Application - fiction A Twist of the Vine - memoir ..................................................................................... by Naomi Ulsted Something To Surrender To - poem Bone Suite - poem ..................................................................................... by Austin Holmes Village Fiddle - poem New Orleans Villanelle - poem ..................................................................................... by Ken Waldman I'd Rather be Influenced - poem Before Thirty - poem ..................................................................................... by Patrick Ramsay Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room - poem Sinatra, Sinatra - poem ..................................................................................... by Paul Fericano Sacrament Meeting Started the Three Hours of Church on Sunday - poem Teddy Thompson Croons Leonard Cohen - poem ..................................................................................... by Natalie Padilla Young The Worrier - poem Junk Email - poem ..................................................................................... by Nancy Takacs Belief - poem Without Question I Am - poem ..................................................................................... by Mike White The First Time I Saw Snow - poem The Little House: Crystal City, Texas - poem ..................................................................................... by Jeff Talmadge The Dream - poem July - poem ..................................................................................... by Shanan Ballam Missa Brevis - poem Foley Catheter - poem ..................................................................................... by Kimberly Johnson Among - poem Insomnia - poem ..................................................................................... by Cynthia Hardy Mākara Beach - poem On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942 - poem ..................................................................................... by Michael McLane

Ignatius by Karin Anderson My God. Maybe I’ve had enough. Let me go home to my own descendants. Maybe my grandmother was right: why dwell on such tragic tales? You’re in too deep. Sudden withdrawal will harm you, distorting all that you dream. What, like meth? I do not understand your meaning. I do not understand my meaning, either. How do I return? Return is eternal. There is nothing but return. I’m not yet ready to believe that’s true. Derrida says the real future is the one we have never seen. I take that to mean our children may still have a few surprising options. Who the f--- is Derrida? Never mind. Send me one last guide. Someone to help me find my mother’s lost people. Please. I want to bring them to her while I can. So many early deaths—no one to preserve the stories. Her mother’s whole family vanished, so young, so many consecutive generations. So many well-meaning replacements insisting on their erasure. How can you tell a four year-old to quit crying for the sudden disappearance of all she understands? She sure did learn to stop the tears. Taught us to do the same. Do we even exist—did we ever exist—if the stories, even the imperfect ones, even the fragments, dissipate with the tellers? My leg hurts. Mine too. So I want a guide on this one. Rational, undramatic, sympathetic. Like my mother. Woman, all you have to guide you through this last mystery is the internet. You’ve run the well of revelation dry. I’m very old, and I’m tired. You purport to be a scholar, do you not? Find her people within the Babel of that lighted box. They do trace themselves in her; you will recognize them as they speak unto your mind. Give me a head start. How far back before we find something familiar? An origin—not just a genealogy? Not so far, in my reckoning. A long time in yours. Begin in Providence, say, 1800. They are, already, five generations made by this perplexing and violent New World. You will be among fellow Americans. Okay. Two brothers, Silas and Festus Sprague, seven years apart. Twin sisters, Barbara Ann and Millicent Lindenberger. The brothers are first cousins to the sisters. Now a multi-family removal to the Ohio frontier. A ricochet of marriages and a sensible family’s capitulation to a story of American angels. A trek to a landscape alien as a moon. My mother wants me to disentangle an administrative forgetting: “The record says that Barbara Ann is married to either Silas Sprague, or Festus Sprague. Which is it? We need to get it right.” Her urgency is different from mine: she wants to put those old lives in order. She wants to send correct information to Salt Lake City, so the Mormon Church can make the long-ago union eternally official. I wish to deconstruct. But we’re both leaning over the same diorama. So I’ll do the homework, and then I’ll walk her in. I will be my mother’s guide. Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to Current Issue As an ‘apostate,’ I work to redeem idiosyncratic meanings from my Latter-Day Saint and Lutheran heritage. Before Us Like a Land of Dreams (Torrey House Press, 2019) portrays peculiar impacts of ancestry; I “resurrect” genealogical figures by inventing a relationship with the medieval Catholic Saint Ignatius, who taught his followers to meditate on a scriptural story so intensely that they could enter it and converse with its characters. This passage appears late in the book’s sequence, as Ignatius loses patience with his cynical acolyte. .................................................................................................................................................................................... KARIN ANDERSON I s the author of the novels Before Us Like a Land of Dreams , What Falls Away , and Things I Didn’t Do (forthcoming in 2025), published by Torrey House Press. She hails from the Great Basin. karinandersonauthor.com Next - Knotted Wrack by Maureen Clark Next

Teddy Thompson Croons Leonard Cohen by Natalie Padilla Young tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine It’s not even a love song, it’s the last drop of milk on dry cereal: the I that knows small windows, bare walls, a finale of soft naked lady: a sighing stripped, a woman. (Remember that first side sway, first spinning hug with someone of possibility? A lot of sweaty skins ago.) Not just ooh-la-la slow stuff, also others with beats, a call to feet, to hips, to who must swing, must knock the head back in time—not century time, music time—4:4, two-step, whatever. (Try not to remember. You still feel a grapefruit clenched in your chest.) Maybe it’s a full room in coordinated sigh. I know from your eyes, and I know from your smile An exhale in, out of that mouth. Maybe things will work, maybe just fine. (A lot of things conjure craving, but he’s only a man, a man too thin singing sweetly.) At the end, there is plenty and not enough to be so brave and so free In this place without explanation, put Teddy on repeat. Teddy repeats Leonard and someone hums along for a while Share: Facebook X (Twitter) Copy link Back Back to First Issue I must admit I have no clarity with this one—is it the poem or the song that I’m attached to? I wrote this when I heard Teddy Thompson cover Leonard Cohen’s “Tonight Will Be Fine,” initially thinking the lyrics were “tonight we’ll be fine.” I sent this little guy out quite a few times and then benched it for years, until a few months ago when I decided to revive and revise. Maybe go listen to Teddy sing Leonard and see what you think. .................................................................................................................................................................................... NATALIE PADILLA YOUNG co-founded and manages Sugar House Review . Author of All of This Was Once Under Water (Quarter Press, 2023). natalieyoungarts.com Next - The Worrier by Nancy Takacs Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue AT ABU ALI Alison Moore It is late summer in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Iran and Iraq are declaring jihad , a holy war on each other, and on the day the missiles begin to rip through the air we think about being in the water. We think about swimming, pretending we're somewhere other than the Middle East for an afternoon. We drive to find a beach at Abu Ali. Giff and Ardelle sit in the front of the pickup, Dennis and Bob and I ride in the back. The little sliding window at the back of the cab is open so we can all hear the classical music hour from Radio Bahrain. Beethoven urges us forward and we leave a plume of dust behind. We can't get away fast enough, out of Jubail and the industrial project where the men work endless hours trying to carry out the erratic whims of the Saudi Royal Commission. As women in an Islamic country, Ardelle and I struggle to find ways to fill our time. We are forbidden to work, to drive a car, even to sit on the seat of a bicycle. We walk to the commissary in 125-degree heat with 100% humidity in long-sleeved, full-length kaftans, thankful at least not to be veiled. At Abu Ali we will be almost naked in bathing suits, visible if only for an afternoon, and very nearly free. We are stopped at a barricade on the narrow causeway to the island. A teenage Saudi soldier sits slouched on a tall stool in the tiny guard hut, listening to a tape of the Rolling Stones on his cassette player. He switches the music off, then saunters slowly toward our truck, scuffing across the asphalt in his dusty sandals. He grips a machine gun in his small hands. He leans down to our open window, peering in at our I.D. badges, warily comparing us to the tiny, laminated photographs on the cards. Straightening up, he flicks one of the tasseled ends of his red and white-checked shemagh over his shoulder, then waves us through with the barrel of the gun. Abu Ali is a wild, uninhabited island. Except for the road and the pipeline, there is nothing but camel grass and low dunes. Sand tracks lead off the narrow road at abrupt angles, veering to either shoreline. We pick a track at random and stop to put the truck in 4-wheel drive. We head for the dunes, growling in the lower gears. It is only a kilometer or so to the shore of the Persian Gulf. Lapping against the white sugar sand is water bluer than the stone in a Navajo ring, shimmering in the thick, humid air. We climb out, laughing and stretching. A blanket is laid down, a square of white cloth like a flag of truce on the sand. We drag our provisions to it—all the things necessary for survival: water, food, paperback novels, sunscreen. We sit down cross-legged, eating fried chicken with our bare hands, tossing the bones over the side, and guzzling iced tea until it drips down our chins. We wear an odd assortment of hats: Giff in a sailor's cap with the brim folded down, Ardelle in a safari helmet. Bob wears a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Dennis has a homemade gutra made of a white T-shirt that says "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" held on his head with a bungee cord, and I wear a frayed straw cowboy hat with a blue-black crow's feather stuck in the hatband. We gaze out over the gulf, north to Iran. When the flies begin to drive us mad, we submerge ourselves up to our shoulders in water. The tide is moving out fast, leaving us sitting in the shallows. The water is not exactly refreshing—it’s thick with salt and close to body temperature. But it lulls us, an amniotic fluid gently rocking our weightless bodies. We are so still that a large, white bird, an egret, drifts close to us on the current. Very slowly, I begin to follow it, walking my hands on the sandy bottom, trailing my legs out behind me. I move parallel to it, keeping the same languid pace, and the bird, if it notices anything at all, sees only a floating hat, which memory tells it is not a dangerous thing. I turn carefully to look over my shoulder and see the others behind me. Now the bird leads the five of us and we all move north along the shoreline as if pulled along on a string. It is the bird who breaks the silence, opening its beak to let out a shrill cry. It rises heavily, beating its spreading wings, and the sound the air makes moving through its feathers is the sound of a lasso in the wind. Its legs hang, black stalks beneath the white body, the toes like the long tines of forks dripping salty water. We watch it go, flying low over the Persian Gulf. We watch until we can't see it clearly anymore, until the white wings disappear into the wisps of black smoke that drift slowly towards us from the north, from the burning city of Abadan. Originally published in The North American Review , March 1987. I lived near Jubail, Saudi Arabia as an expat from 1980 to 1982. My husband was a photographer on contract and had spent two years there already when I joined him. Abu Ali was an uninhabited island in the Persian Gulf where we occasionally went to get away from the restrictions of living in a Muslim city not behind the walls of an American compound. This is the story of our breakaway, one day, with friends, when a bit of the Iran-Iraq War broke through. "At Abu Ali" was a breakthrough in that it was my first published piece. Previous ALISON MOORE is s a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and a former Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in fiction, and tours with the multi-media humanities program, "Riders on the Orphan Train," which she co-created with the musician Phil Lancaster. ridersontheorphantrain.org Next

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