The Sound of Sugar....Patrick Thomas Henry

“Death, If You Don’t Mind, Please Come To The Front Of The Class”

teacher adjusts the half
moons of her glasses, her chalk
ticking against the slate
in three crumbling clicks, &

dust sprinkles like incense
ash cast from a silver thurible
onto the sooty erasers’
plastic catafalque ledge, &

the boy pushes himself off
by his elbows, his black sweat-
shirt, sizes too big, gathers
over his bony hips, &

the rheumy-eyed class mute,
expressionless, turns aside, turns
pale, turns to limestone white,
blue-veined note paper, &

the boy steps to teacher’s
tallies, graphite powder,
chalk dust, graveling the path
beyond a roster of the listless &

the inattentive, the absent




About the Poet:
Patrick Thomas Henry holds an MA in English Literature from Bucknell University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. at the George Washington University.  His fiction, poetry, and reviews have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Green Briar Review, Revolution House, The Writing Disorder, The Writing Disorder Anthology, Northville Review, Sugar House Review, Modern Language Studies, and The Short Review.  He also contributes to The Story Prize’s blog.  He lives in Alexandria, VA, with his girlfriend and their cat.               


About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

The Sound of Sugar...Rob Carney

A Lesson Every Shipwreck Learns Too Late

Boats don’t know they’re boats.
That’s why they can float on the water.

If they knew their anchors weren’t house keys,
knew the waves weren’t their own steady heartbeats . . .

if they knew their sails were only sails
and not them breathing out and in . . .

they’d nosedive down, plunge
suddenly as pocket change

somebody dropped. They’d lie there broken
on the living room floor.

Years from now you could visit them,
put on a wetsuit and air tank,

explore among fish and the coral kaleidoscopes,
the here-and-gone shadows of sharks,

but what do you think you’d find?

That sunken trawler was no treasure boat.
That passenger ferry was a passenger ferry.

Even you, my sloop, you’re ordinary:
sailing along toward your no less ordinary loss.




About the Poet:
Rob Carney is the author of three collections—Story Problems (Somondoco, 2011); Weather Report (Somondoco, 2006); and Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts, winner of the 2002 Pinyon Press National Poetry Book Contest—and two chapbooks, New Fables, Old Songs, winner of the 2002 Dream Horse Press National Chapbook Competition, and This Is One Sexy Planet, winner of the Frank Cat Press Poetry Chapbook Award in 2005. Home Appraisals, a new chapbook, including several poems that first appeared in Sugar House Review, is forthcoming from Plan B Press in fall 2012. He is a Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City.


About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

The Sound of Sugar....Karen Skolfield

Frost in the Low Areas

The health survey said
he would live to 76 and I, 86.
Something to do with men’s

hearts on their worn old grapevines.
Something to do with their will
to lay down and die. In the westerns,

how glad they were to give their lives
away. Bad guy, if you can’t shoot down
a junebug’s nostril, you don’t stand

much of a chance. Men, thinking
they don’t have to cut power
to a bound-up sawblade.

Just think, Dennis says. Ten years
to yourself. No one stealing
the sheets or the last of the ham.

He says this as we make pesto.
This is how we joke with
each other, ha ha, and then

we kiss. Seriously, he says,
imagine no more socks
on the mantle. My arms

the sharp odor of garlic. Basil.
Parmesan cheese. Tonight,
a frost the herbs

won’t survive. Twilight
we worked the rows,
frantic, our gentleness gone.

Behind us, nothing but stems
and their faint heat. Before us,
the first crisp morning.


About the Poet:
Karen Skolfield’s manuscript Frost in the Low Areas won the First Book Award for Poetry from Zone 3 Press and will be published fall 2013. She is a contributing editor at the literary magazine Stirring and her poems have appeared in 2011 Best of the Net Anthology, Cave Wall, Memorious, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, West Branch, and others. Visit her online at http://www.karenskolfield.blogspot.com/ 


About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

The Sound of Sugar....Kate Greenstreet

719

The old man reaches out his hand

and the young man
reaches out his hand

but they’re not quite close enough to touch.

We come upon the unexpected
news of your death.
It’s a work day.

Maybe all this sweating does some good?


The main thing is your idea (you said)
of who you are.

Then the rearrangement
of the furniture, everyone in black.

Though isn’t there always someone in a dark
color not black, because they don’t have black.
Or maybe, for once,
I wanted to express myself.

Sometimes, now, I think
you’re really in Brazil

or Colorado. Free
to start a different life,

take up
a different instrument.


—Some leaves never let go.

—But don’t they always fall in the end?

—I don’t know. Presumably.

—Are they dead? Even if they still hang on?

—Depends. On your definition. But yes.
   

About the poet:
Kate Greenstreet's new book Young Tambling is just out from Ahsahta Press. Her other books are case sensitive and The Last 4 Things, also with Ahsahta. For more information, visit Kate's site at kickingwind.com.

More inforamtion about Young Tambling, including how to purchase, can be found at: https://ahsahtapress.org/product/young-tambling/.


(Attn Northern Utah friends!) Kate Greenstreet will be reading with Janet Holmes on Monday, April 8th at 7 pm in The Art Barn (54 Finch Lane, SLC, UT). Presented by Sugar House Review and City Art the event is free and open to the public.



About the Sound of Sugar:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors.We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

The Sound of Sugar....Kat Finch

WAKE

             he’s a hypnic jerk, he’s a hypnic jerk, in my ear he’s a hypnic jerk
and he got blue knees, yeah he got blue knees—he’s a cosmic squeeze
        baby bound bowline hook and sinker so the butter is mellow
       feeling all sorts of yellow
let it go let it go let it go (let it snow (repeat x3))
             electro-pop rocks and soda synth slough almost make it true
this isn’t a poem about you cosmic blue and an old black shoe
        it’s about tenfold and coming on fast or slow
              shit red bike and a 40, hey no now not nearly 42, 42 is never not you
atlantic pedantic and neurotic too
                   homily anomaly stitch the tool mouths blue blue
squeeze let out the tease let loose the tease take it whole
      bike fight bike fight saw sasquatch bleached dead bleached
legs not so cosmic not so cosmic you electro-funk fool
                   put past the ears the nears put past the you break it blue
            and a hypnic jerk just a picnic jerk he’s a hypnic jerk the ear whore you
sop blue knees sop blue knees nobody ever did never say please





About the poet:

Kat Finch is a poetry editor at Mixed Fruit Magazine. She likes her orange cat and her copper bike. Her poems can be found in Birdfeast, The Dirty Napkin, and The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review among others.



About the Sound of Sugar:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors.We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

The Sound of Sugar....Matt Mason

September 21: Poem For Omaha

There’s just enough mist
for the lamp posts to masquerade
as tent poles tonight;

instead of spilling
down, they hold up
canvases of light.

And 30th Street shines
like a river under the moon
washing past brown pawn shops gone to bed,

because this city smells
beautiful, this city
of wet leaves

sticking like frescos
along the sidewalks, a masterpiece
the length of my city

that I remember–with a start
as I drive home, window down–
I love.



About the poet:

Matt Mason has won a Pushcart Prize and 2 Nebraska Book Awards (for Poetry in 2007 and Anthology in 2006); organized and run poetry programming with the U.S. Department of State in Kathmandu, Nepal and Minsk, Belarus; and been on 5 teams at the National Poetry Slam. He is Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, former board president of the Nebraska Center for the Book, and has served as the Nebraska State Coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, a Poetry Foundation/NEA program. His website is matt.midverse.com.  This poem appears in his book The Baby That Ate Cincinnati, out from Stephen F. Austin University Press in Spring, 2013.

About the Sound of Sugar:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors.We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to

Jeff Whitney: [Everyone in Goya’s black paintings...]

[Everyone in Goya’s black paintings...]

Everyone in Goya’s black paintings was mad. It’s true; they grazed
in fields like cows, slept at night using chickens for pillows. In the
mornings they’d wake thirsty. If rivers are a sign of something big-
ger farther on, their wide eyes were surely rivers though I can’t say
to where.

Things have a way of disappearing that pleases the gods. You’d be
mad to try and stay.
           

About the poet:

Jeff Whitney is the co-founding editor of Peel Press.  Recent poems have appeared in Devil’s Lake, Thrush, Whiskey Island Review, and Verse Daily.  He teaches English in South Korea.

About the Sound of Sugar:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors.We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.