Sunday, October 22, 2023

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

(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.

Sunday, October 8, 2023

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

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.

Sunday, September 17, 2023

RUTH AWAD—"MOTHER OF" (Issue 26)

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.

Sunday, September 3, 2023

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

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.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

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

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.