KASEY JUEDS — "CEDAR CLOSET" (Issue 29)

Sugar House Review · Kasey Jueds's, "Cedar Closet"

CEDAR CLOSET

I didn’t want to write that place

with its daughterless walls

smelling of lost forests, of bafflement.

There the moths would not.

There, the small hands

I smoothed along the boards

to quiet them.

When I pressed my limbs between

the weight of winter

coats: no door, no secret

I could find. And still

those planks with their voiceless

noise, their fevered blush

like the fur of the first dog

I loved. Darting into long grass

in the field behind the house, she’d

vanish, return. Always, then,

it was August, the end

of a road that ran straight

for miles.

I can still make

a church of my fingers

to call back the burrs

snagged in her coat. I can make

a steeple, reaching

toward untouchable blue.

But do I make that closet, the want

and gone of it, where

no one almost never—

or the field, where wind

keeps erasing

the sentence in my head: the one

that begins with winter

and ends in a kneeling

that leaves no mark on the earth.

ABOUT THE POET 

Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University

of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, 

and The Thicket. She lives in a small town in the mountains of New York state 

with one human and one spotty dog.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 

opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 

poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors 

from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 

hear it.

KIERON WALQUIST — "THE OREGON TRAIL® + ALL OF MY DEATHS" (Issue 29)

Sugar House Review · Kieron Walquist's, "The Oregon Trail + All of My Deaths"

THE OREGON TRAIL + ALL OF MY DEATHS

An accidental buckshot, broken leg [couldn’t bother to bandage the

bullet-hole or change clothes], cholera, dehydration, dysentery, the

devil I’m sure dulling the disk, exhaustion, fever, foes, the fire I forgot

to gut until I was engulfed, greed, grief, the goddamn horse taking

off, the horse-kick, the humor in dying infinitely, insufficient funds,

the jaws of a rattlesnake, bad jar of beans, karma, knife-wound,

lash of sunlight, lily of the valley, measles, mosquitos, nightmares,

the promise of Oregon, an oasis being my heat-pickled brain, the

pioneer life, quarrels, questions, quitting, risks, my toothpick

schooner riding over rocks, river crossings, starvation, stupid shit,

typhoid, terrible luck, twisted lung, unarmed + under-fire, ushered

again into violence, vanity, vengeance, very wet-behind-the-ears, the

weather, want, wishful thinking, X marking the spot, yes when it was

no, yellow flowers, the zigzag of the computer mouse, zooming over

information, zero communication, your belief in me.

ABOUT THE POET 

Kieron Walquist (he/they) is a queer, neurospicy poet + visual artist from

mid-Missouri. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis + is

currently a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. Their work has received 

support from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Monson Arts, + 

Vermont Studio Center. LOVE LOCKS, their first chapbook, is out with 

Quarterly West. He lives in Salt Lake City.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 

opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 

poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors 

from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 

hear it.

VIOLETA GARCIA-MENDOZA—"SOLASTALGIA NOCTURNE" (Issue 29)

Sugar House Review · Violeta Garcia-Mendoza's, "Solastalgia Nocturne"

SOLASTALGIA NOCTURNE

It’s late spring & earlier I overfilled the bird feeders

while thinking about karma, anticipating hungry

wildlife, insomnia. Each night’s its own soft throat

& lying awake I distract myself from past selves

by playing catch & release with Ring doorbell alerts.

In the driveway: deer, red fox, raccoons

slipping between arborvitae & basketball hoop.

In the distance, lightning ironworks the sky:

decades of rooflines, centuries of oaks. Everything

is temporary is a kind of curse where existence stirs

like weather, where survival plots in terms of forage,

tunnel, shelter. These hours, I’m sorry to be human

with our trademark cornering factors; I know

every apology creates its own future problems.

The night animals feed, then pixelate

back into the screen’s consolation wild.

ABOUT THE POET 

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban 

wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, 

and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is 

a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow 

University. Violeta lives with her husband, teenage children, and pack of rescue 

dogs on a small-certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the 

Land-Bound is her debut collection, out from June Road Press in 2024. VioletaGarciaMendoza.com

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 

opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 

poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors 

from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 

hear it.

ERICA DAWSON—"SONNET AFTER AUTOCORRECT TURNS WHY DO YOU LIVE SO FAR AWAY TO WHY DO YOU LOVE SO FAR AWAY" (Issue 29)

Sugar House Review · Erica Dawson's, "Sonnet after autocorrect turns why do you live so far away to why do you love so far away"

Sonnet after autocorrect turns why do you live so far away? to why do you love so far away?

i love at close range. you leave room for myth,

ancient rock formations, riddles, the changing width

of oceans at high tide. i cannot touch,

in my memory, your taste or feel you such

as one feels their own shadow’s crouch. [distance,

you have failed me.] i haven’t seen you since

you left my bed. my heart has not yet grown

fonder or hardened into fist-sized stone.

it’s still an instrument of life, a beat

and then a beat. in the atria grooves

you must acquire how to love me. ride

your vanishing. i’m the fixed one who moves

in place. picture my face on our night street

rinsed clean at dawn. then love. love then abide.

ABOUT THE POET 

Erica Dawson is a neurodivergent African-American poet living in the

Baltimore-DC area. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, 

When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018). Her poems have appeared 

in Best American Poetry, Orion, The Believer, VQR, and other journals and 

anthologies. She loves her dog Stella, Wu-Tang Clan, and anything cooked with 

cardamom.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 

opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 

poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors 

from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 

hear it.

MICHAEL CHANG—"执迷不悔 UNREPENTANT" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Michael Chang's, "执迷不悔 Unrepentant"

UNREPENTANT 

What can I do but shine / in memory 

—John Wieners 

● 

racing down a beach may reap uncommon rewards 

a simple gift, one a ghost could give 

when all’s said & done, what have we got left 

ghost nuts, a whole wad 

[something to share] 

ur breath on my chest 

AG standing for “aspiring governor” 

u will surely hate growing old 

the constant yelping in the yard 

followed by extended periods of pain 

my mood depending upon the fireworks 

i derive no pleasure from fantasies 

indecent lips, carnal skin 

unwholesome, vulgar 

buggers to be awoken 

ppl who disappear into side streets w/o warning 

& never look back 

on a day like today 

remind me how the sunroom filled w/ ferns 

over our protestations 

the trip to echo park being unnecessary 

it was the first good party of the season [some say the only] 

baubles & balls 

snow that keeps melting 

after u shake it off 

three bees on a shield 

shiny headgear lifted from a learned man 

reciting the dimensions of a dream

ABOUT THE POET 

Michael Chang (they/them) is the author of Almanac of Useless Talents 

(CLASH Books, 2022) and Synthetic Jungle (Northwestern University Press, 

2023). Tapped to edit Lambda Literary's Emerge anthology, their poems have 

been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. 

They were awarded the Poetry Project's Brannan Prize & edit poetry at Fence.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 

opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 

poems from our pages, read by the poet. This an open invitation to all contributors 

from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 

hear it.