Sunday, March 3, 2024

SHARI ZOLLINGER—"KILL YOUR DALRINGS: A ZODIAC*" (Issue 27)

KILL YOUR DALRINGS: A ZODIAC* 

ARIES
March 21 to April 19 
What if you stay a minute longer, 
turn toward hieroglyphic heat; translate 
the slow theater of fuel, oxygen, gas? 
Quiet elongation of ember.

TAURUS
April 20 to May 20 
What if you stay too long? 
Clay sculpture readying for foundry, 
threshold of the very long pose. 
Might you enact a risky yawn? 

GEMINI
May 21 to June 21 
What if you say nothing, 
even when rumor gathers in your throat, 
or when the tornado under your tongue 
seeks ground? 

CANCER
June 22 to July 22 
What if you stop looking in the mirror? 
Nanao Sakaki says, "to stay young, to save the world, 
break the mirror.” 
Wetland-scattered water calls up a new image. 
The place where blue herons nest. 

LEO
July 23 to August 22 
What if you walk through the city, 
not as yourself? Invisible, cloaked—disguised. 
Moustached and platinum-mohawked, 
how will you survive the day? 

VIRGO
August 23 to September 23 
What if you let the dust settle? 
Skiff of very find powder accumulates 
in the gutters of rare books. 
Resist the temptation to scatter. 

LIBRA
September 24 to October 22 
What if you risk asymmetry? 
This will mean a new set of plans. 
Let the pond to ripple. 
Look for chaos. 

SCORPIO 
October 23 to November 21 
What if you let go of her hand? 
Kite-like, she’ll fly up, 
tiny bowties on string. Tether release. 
Emptiness palms a beginning. 

SAGITTARUIS 
November 22 to December 21 
What if you came down 
from your fire outlook, from smoke 
and elevation? It’s time to walk 
off the mountain.

CAPRICORN
December 22 to January 19 
What if you let Time, 
fall from a cliff face? How will you 
measure your minutes going 
forward? 

AQUARIUS
January 20 to February 18 
What if you consider 
coming in from the stars, just for a peek 
at what the humans are doing? 
This will be research. 

PISCES 
February 19 to March 20 
What if you lay a little longer, 
if only to consider the astonishing 
dream motif conjured night 
after night? 



ABOUT THE POET 

A native of Utah, Shari Zollinger divides her time between her work as a 
professional astrologer and independent bookseller. She has been known to write 
a poetic verse or two with published work in Sugar House Review and Redactions
She recently published Carrying Her Stone, a collection of poems based on the 
work of Auguste Rodin.



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.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

JUAN J. MORALES—"LOOKING FOR DUENDE" (Issue 27)

LOOKING FOR DUENDE

My parents had a sprinkler 
that sputtered water whenever 
the tap was off, and mom surprised me 
when she casually said 
duende was watering the backyard again. 
I heard duende as Lorca’s captured inspiration 
in college. I asked how to translate it 
into English, and my parents couldn’t, 
settling on “the mischief of a goblin.” 
Mom added that it’s like 
the movie with small green Gremlins terrorizing 
the Pennsylvania town 
during Christmas. 
When I left home, 
sent out to find duende, 
the muse gifted deep wells of dream, 
podcasts about skinwalkers and tricksters 
orchestrating mischief, winds singing 
through deep woods 
to echo like ocean waves. 
I didn’t know I first encountered duende 
in the Looney Tunes cartoon 
where Bugs Bunny saves 
the B-52 bomber from the small saboteur 
and William Shatner's Twilight Zone plane ride, 
watching monster dismantle 
the engine before flying into the lightning 
and leaving him in lunacy. 
Duende coaxed me to pedal faster 
on my childhood's rickety bike, 
to follow shadows mistaken 
for witches, to welcome deja vu 
on mountain trails I’ve never hiked before. 
I still search beyond Lorca’s execution 
and mass grave 
whenever I study full moon's grief. 
I accept the medium’s summertime warning 
that my dead father has become duende, 
promising to meddle 
until we safely make it 
into the chilly months of 
November and December.



ABOUT THE POET 

Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. 
He is the author of three poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide 
to End Times, and his fourth collection, Dream of the Bird Tattoo, is forthcoming 
from University of New Mexico Press. Morales is a CantoMundo Fellow, a 
Macondo Fellow, the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press, and the associate dean 
of the College of Humanities Arts & Social Sciences at Colorado State University 
Pueblo.



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.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

MIRANDE BISSELL—"AIR POEM " (Issue 27)

AIR POEM

Loft Mountain after a day of midges 
and sweat. I sleep long enough to start over. 
Night wind lifts the tent’s fabric like a tongue 
plays on a tongue, has waited for us 
to want something more than rest. 

The air has the calcium sweetness 
of well-water. It’s bone-building air. 

I have a collarbone to cool, blushed-apple 
shoulders to round. All these years, we 
should have comforted each other. 



ABOUT THE POET 

Mirande Bissell is a teacher in Baltimore, MD. Her first book of poems 
Stalin at the Opera was selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2020 
Ghost Peach Press prize.



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.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

JOHN GALLAHER—"THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY " (Issue 27)

THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY 

In the cartoon version, the protagonist is left in charge of a baby 
who is in some fashion courting disaster. It’s accident prone. It’s a maniac. 
And the little creature’s delivered, last second, back safe 
like nothing’s happened. Perhaps the protagonist, by this time, 
is heavily bandaged or smoldering, Tom & Jerry version, Daffy Duck 
version. In the Chick Avenue version, 
I put the dogs out to run, and hear a parent bird going crazy 
before I see what’s going on. A little bird, not yet able to fly, 
is in Daisy’s mouth. I do the “make angry face 
and shout DROP IT” routine, and Daisy drops it, flopping 
and spinning in the grass. I shoo the dogs into the house, 
and go to see to the bird. I hate days like this. 

I’m trying to be positive about life cycles. My father’s in his 90s, 
declining. It’s God’s machinery, but what exactly 
am I supposed to do with some flopping, mostly dead thing? 
It turns out though, that the bird isn’t dead. A bit of a limp, but otherwise, 
looking steady-ish. Except it can’t stay in the yard. This 
is the dog yard. The parent bird is still going nuts above us. 
It’s a standoff. And I’m not convinced that evolution has done a good job 
with birds. My father called the other night. Actually, I called him, 
but halfway through the conversation, he said 
                                                                        the reason he called me 
was to find out how things are going, and I didn’t correct him. 
That’s how things are going. The nest is twenty feet up. That’s also 
how things are going. So the best I can do is usher the bird 
to the other side of our fence. I’m helping things along. Here you go, 
little bird, on your way. And the thing about cartoons 
is that even in cartoons 
                                    death intrudes, with bigger and bigger fish, 
in sequence, emergent phenomena swallowing each other. 
Baby birds don’t know these things. Parent birds aren’t equipped, so 
before I’m even into the house, the little bird is into the road. 
Busy road. And then it’s a car, just like that. 35mph. And 
the parent bird is no longer carrying on and the day grows quiet.



ABOUT THE POET 

John Gallaher's forthcoming collection is My Life in Brutalist Architecture 
(Four Way Books 2024). He lives in northwest Missouri and co-edits Laurel 
Review.



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.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

TODD ROBINSON—"10PM, AND SHE SAYS THE MOON IS BEAUTIFUL" (Issue 27)

10PM, AND SHE SAYS THE MOON IS BEAUTIFUL

And it is, though skylight glass blurs the ball rolling in its practiced groove 
and she hasn’t left the house in a month, vomits mercury-poisoned fish, 
sleeps alone in the lumpy king bed you shared. You have learned so much 
about neurology, psychology, immune response, but still manage to pretend 
you live with a healthy person instead of a silhouette. Who’s Frankenstein 
and who’s the monster, your analyst asked in a flourish of rhetoric. Hours ago 
you ate a loaf of bread the size of a faun like that actor ate an entire pie 
in A Ghost Story and later you might dance to Joy Division, thinking of Ian 
swaying from his rope, but the 12-step friend said you are thriving in spite of 
tinnitus yowling in your ruined ears and twenty drugs she takes to function 
and the ghetto bird just now flaying Spring’s first night and even the hyper 
acute imagery on the new smart TV is just more dukkha. Better slur the 
serenity prayer, 
get grateful for yellow 
grass and cracked birdbath.



ABOUT THE POET 

Todd Robinson’s work has lately appeared (or soon will appear) in Notre Dame 
Review, The Pinch, North American Review, and South Dakota Review. He is an 
assistant professor in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska-Omaha 
and caregiver to his partner, a disabled physician.



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.