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.