SONJA VITOW—"(WHEN NO ONE)" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Sonja Vitow's "(When No One)"

(When No One)

a soft thing often 

hopes to be touched 

(the temptation to take a soft 

thing in your palm 

& when no one is looking, 

check to see that it’s really 

so soft) 

to tender something 

delicate (when no one is looking) 

what great responsibility 

(the temptation to take a soft 

thing in your palm 

& spend a finger over it, 

thinking just: how soft, how 

fragile) the temptation 

to take the soft thing between 

a finger and thumb 

and apply some pressure 

(just some) 

& when it breaks, pretend 

it was never soft 

(the temptation to then say) 

I didn’t know my own strength

ABOUT THE POET 

Sonja Vitow (she/they) is a queer Jewish teacher living in the Jamaica Plain 

neighborhood of Boston, where they are the editor of a small literary magazine 

called The Knicknackery and in charge of the soap enterprise I'd Lather Not. They 

received their MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in 2013, and are 

currently pursuing their PhD in human sexuality from Widener University. Some 

of their work can be found in Rattle, Harvard Review, Fugue Journal, The Rumpus, 

and Carve Magazine, or at SonjaVitow.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.

SKYE JACKSON—"SADE & STEVIE SONNET SEQUENCE" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Skye Jackson's "sade & stevie sonnet sequence"

SADE & STEVIE SONNET SEQUENCE

i listen to sade with men i love 

foolish & wild, i whisper forever 

glistening like diamonds, so wet, in their beds: 

my spent heart, cold, shakes the four posts again 

don’t mock me as i melt into my gin 

it starts with record players and hot nights 

i find the wrong ones & fail to do right. 

the wine hugs as you call me a good girl. 

desire gussies my throat like ruined pearls. 

there are depths to the sorrow her voice holds: 

sometimes i think you’re just too good for me 

i beg for a cage but you set me free 

i know i’m about to have a breakup— 

stevie’s voice through the cvs speakers 

the cvs dims as stevie’s voice spins: 

when you build your house / then please call me home 

i buy plan b & pads i hope to need. 

the dark blood comes as i drive into work. 

the psychic will call it a miscarriage. 

my soul will call it an answered prayer. 

i look for a man who was never there. 

i call in sick as my bent body roars. 

there are certain debts only women pay. 

who did i destroy? myself, you or us? 

years later, i don’t remember his name: 

the man who stood outside as i shed you. 

sade’s voice purrs through my studio walls: 

will you keep bringing out the best in me?

ABOUT THE POET 

Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. She served as a poetry 

editor for Bayou Magazine and several other publications. Her work appeared or 

is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Green Mountains Review, Rattle, and 

elsewhere. Her debut chapbook A Faster Grave won the 2019 Antenna Prize. She 

was a finalist for the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize, and in 2021, she won the AWP 

Intro Journals Award. Her work was recently selected by Billy Collins for 

inclusion in the Library of Congress educational programming. This past spring, 

she was crowned the winner of the legendary KGB Open Mic Contest in New 

York City. She currently serves as the 2022 Writer-In-Residence at the Key 

West Literary Seminar in Florida.

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.

RUTH AWAD—"MOTHER OF" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Ruth Awad's "Mother Of"

MOTHER OF

an ascending thoracic 

aortic aneurysm, right above 

the root. First found seven years 

ago. The size of a walnut. She could 

not work. We painted her red walls white. 

Easier to sell. Put her artwork in storage and moved 

her to a farmhouse on a hill. Then the symptoms abated. 

The aneurysm dormant as a winter bear. We thought we’d been 

spared. In summer it’s the size of a ruby plum. The way fruit 

can ripen. The doctors speak in a language unlike my 

mother. Sharp and sterile. A gloved finger draws 

a vertical line down the sternum to explain 

an open-chest approach. Her heart, 

her heart, the mother of my 

whole red world.

ABOUT THE POET 

Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet, 2021 NEA Poetry Fellow, and the author 

of Set to Music a Wildfire, winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 

2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Alongside Rachel Mennies, she is the 

co-editor of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2020 

and 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her work appears in 

Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Believer, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, 

The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

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.

MATT MASON—"ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Matt Mason's "On the Winter Solstice"

ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021

    

When you ask at the candy store 

if they felt that, too, 

the bump that shook your whole hotel down the street, 

it starts an excited chat 

about what it might have been— 

earthquake, gas blast, rock drop, truck thump—and 

he mentions supersonic jets from the A.F. base, but 

that’s further east, he says, 

that’s more around Flying Monkey Mesa, 

he says. 

                                And 

                                you, 

                            remarkably, 

                            you now live 

                                         on a planet 

                           where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                                exists. 

It’s named after animatronic dummies used to test ejector seats and, 

yes, there originally were 

monkeys, and, he says, one—only one—bear, 

but this is not about your species 

and its sometimes too-evident harm, this 

is about the wonder of your kind: 

in conjuring names that can make minds soar, 

in finding that thing you term humanity 

which pushes you to choose to use monkey robots 

instead of stirring more terror in actual monkeys 

(and bears) with the hard-to-dream technology 

    of a machine that flies, 

        of supersonic speeds, 

            of ejector seats and parachutes, 

                of this world 

                        where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                            is just down the highway.

ABOUT THE POET 

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and former executive director of the 

Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009–2022. Through the US State Department, 

he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the 

recipient of a Pushcart Prize and his work can be found in The New York Times, 

on NPR’s Morning Edition, and in American Life in Poetry. Mason's fourth book, 

At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was 

released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, 

the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.

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.

JUSTIN EVANS—"AFTER READING THE POEMS OF TADA CHIMAKO" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Justin Evans' "After Reading the Poems of Tada Chimako"

AFTER READING THE POEMS OF TADA CHIMAKO

Pine trees announce their death shedding 

all their needles— spending their reserves 

like a child’s allowance 

New forest growth requires decades of patience 

waiting for rot to break away from the canopy, 

letting sunlight rest on the ground 

and sometimes it takes fire 

In my dreams I forget my own name while 

running a maze in the darkened dirty streets of Paris 

until I wake in a stranger’s bed 

These things are the same 

nothing dividing one from the other 

all answering to the same name

ABOUT THE POET 

Justin Evans was born and raised in Utah. He served in the Army and returned to 

Utah for his education. For the past two decades, he has lived in rural Nevada with 

his wife and sons where he teaches at the local high school. He is the author of ten 

books of poetry. Most recently are Cross Country (Wordtech, 2019), written with 

the poet Jeff Newberry, and All The Brilliant Ideas I've Ever Had (Kelsay Books, 

2020). In early 2022, Justin was awarded an artist fellowship from The Nevada 

Arts Council.

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.