Jesus Age

When someone says, I’m hopping on the train,
I see that person bouncing toward the train,
And bouncing like a crack-addled rabbit.

When I stand on the platform, James Brown yells,
Let’s count it off, let’s take it to the bridge.
And Gladys’s Pips woo woo their way to Georgia.

When I consider jump, I think of all
The people over 33 who say
There’s no year better than this one.

Jesus was supposed to save me at seventeen.
When he said no man knows the day or hour,
He said nothing of adolescent girls.


About the Poet:

Erica Dawson’s first collection of poems, Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser 2007), won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Her new collection, The Small Blades Hurt, is forthcoming from Measure Press. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, Harvard Review, and other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the undergraduate, and the low-residency MFA, program at University of Tampa.

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....Scott Poole

A Beautiful Flower

Don’t call her vagina a beautiful flower.
Please don’t.
If her vagina were a beautiful flower
then she would have bees in her pants
all the time
and it would be impossible to hold her
close enough
to be intoxicated
by the gossamer tendrils of her perfume.
One cannot be swept away by subtle
drops of dew welling at the corners
of her eyes when you reveal
your most vulnerable,
baby-chick-softness
sentiments
if your dearest love
is hopping around
like a River Dancer on crack,
waving her hands madly
in front of her crotch.
Then, all you’ve got is
is a screaming freak-out
ripping her pants off in public
and that would not be a flower,
my friend,
that would be porn.



“A Beautiful Flower” from The Sliding Glass Door © Scott Poole 2011 by permission of
Colonus Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.



About the Poet:

Scott Poole is the author of two books of poetry, The Cheap Seats and Hiding from Salesmen. Poole is also the resident poet of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s weekly show, “Live Wire!” and the founding director of both Wordstock, Portland’s Annual Festival of the Book and Get Lit!, Spokane’s Annual Book Festival. Currently, he is a software developer who lives in the town he grew up in, Vancouver, Washington with his wife and two children.



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....Lucy Biederman

ALL OUR HITS ARE ACCIDENTS

The dead are dead—
we can do whatever we want.
At no station on earth do they stand
and wait. Have we crammed this barren land
to spite them? They might not recognize what they’d return to haunt,
they’ve missed so much.
Someone said they liked the color red
so we painted the station, the trains, the casually panicking bus.










About the Poet:

Lucy Biederman is a doctoral student at the University of Louisiana and the author of a chapbook, The Other World (dancing girl press, 2012). Poems of hers are forthcoming or have appeared recently in ILK, Shampoo, Many Mountains Moving, Gargoyle, Ping Pong, Word Riot, and The Tusculum Review.


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....Brian Gilmore

Billy Bathgate (for chico)

 

    all i’ve got is this picture.

it could have been van der zee

gordon parks,

oggi ogburn fresh from

a chancellor williams’

shoot,

we are capable boys;

innocent,

up some small mountain

in the summertime

from that swamp of a city,

we couldn’t juggle balls

didn’t know any gangsters,

all we had was ice cold michelob and red juicy melon

holy like water.

we didn’t even know about the rattlesnakes

that i’ve now been told are all over that mountain.

all i’ve got is this picture.

    i could call up the crew,

though some of them are gone away now like wisps of smoke.

others are here but just floating on the skyline like kite

without string.

we were capable boys,

looking into the future as if we

would live long like frederick douglass

or c.l.r. james.

did i mention the michelob?

the red juicy melon

holy like water?

and how about those rattlesnakes?

all around us always now that we know

they are there.

all i’ve got is this picture.

unbreakable smiles.

lean frames.

polo shirts gripping some young

boys soon to be walking tight rope

without poles.

    it’s there, all of it.

    ice cold michelob.

    melon holy like water.

    rattlesnakes.

    we couldn’t juggle balls.

    didn’t know any gangsters.

we were capable boys,

all i’ve got is this picture.

About the Poet:

Washington D.C.'s Brian Gilmore is a poet, writer, and public interest lawyer. He currently teaches at the Michigan State University College of Law. He is the author of two collections of poetry: "elvis presley is alive and well and living in harlem," and "Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: poem for Duke Ellington." His poetry, essays, and reviews have been widely published in newspapers, magazines and journals; his honors include - Individual Artist Award - Maryland State Arts Council - 2001, and 2003, Pushcart Prize nominee 2007, Willow Books Award nominee (fiction) - 2013. He is also a regular columnist with the Progressive Media Project where he writes about politics, law, and culture. His blog is the chocolate city review.

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....Randall R. Freisinger

Alien Sex

I stood on the porch that night,
the lights from a parent’s car just vanishing
at the end of the street. My friend and I
had been to a movie, It Came From
Outer Space. Above me, the stars
had lost their innocence. My block

throbbed with threats from distant galaxies.
Because I was late, I entered the house
quietly, hoping to sneak unnoticed upstairs.
All seemed normal enough for the usual
Saturday night of too much drinking—
My parents, asleep, he in his chair

in front of the guttering television screen,
she splayed out on the studio couch
in a nearby room. How quickly
the known world can turn strange.
I knew what it was when I saw it
on the living room floor. I had swiped

them from Crown Drugs and filled them
with water to ambush passing cars. This one,
viscous, lay damply coiled on the rug
like the sloughed husk of a newborn alien
that must have streaked from deepest space
even as my friend and I hunkered down

in the Southtown Theater’s three-dimensional
darkness. My brain, agitated,
could come to only two conclusions,
one so fantastic my mind refused
the gross picture it posed. The only credible
way to explain it: Extraterrestrials.

Either way, I had no choice but to destroy
the evidence, picking the sticky chrysalis
skin up with a thick wad of Kleenex
and shoving it deep in the kitchen trash
right alongside my own astonishment.
Upstairs, I tried hard to distract myself

with prayer, but that wet rubber
crackled in my mind’s air like static
and there was no getting through
that night to the starry kingdom of God.
Next morning at breakfast, I studied them

carefully through my new 3-D glasses,
my father in profile with his coffee
and Sunday paper, Mother a bit
groggy at the stove, tending
pans of bacon and eggs. Nothing
amiss: no telltale scales on his hands,
no saw-toothed tail switching beneath

her gossamer robe. All through breakfast
I stayed vigilant, my eyes as sharp
as Flash Gordon’s, my mind hyper
with the ammo of fight or flight.
After breakfast I planned to search
in our backyard for the crater, the mother ship

I knew it would contain.
I would bravely destroy the invaders.
Then it would be my most solemn duty
to inform the world: From now on
here, on Planet Earth, things would never,
ever again be the same.






About the Poet:

Randall R. Freisinger's poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and have been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes. He has four collections of poems: Running Patterns (1985 Flume Press National Chapbook Competition winner), Hand Shadows  (Green Tower Press, 1988), Plato’s Breath (May Swenson Poetry Prize, Utah State University Press, 1997), and Nostalgia’s Thread: Ten Poems on Norman Rockwell Paintings  (Hol Art Books, 2009).   

He was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and educated at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  Since 1977 he has lived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he is Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric, Literature, and Creative Writing in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University.


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....Joy Gaines-Friedler

Returns

It’s coming upon a year my friend sat
         Lotus style
in her Hospice bed, said, it’s all so terrible

and, now I know love.
And, my neighbor called to say his wife
        is leaving him.

I admit slugging through with only
a feathery slip of a word—
sorry.

Lately a kind of dividend is paid
when nothing changes overnight

when the phone remains silent
and no conduit of news diminishes us.

That exoskeleton that can grow around me
    keeping sweetness out?
I’m sorry for that too.

When my friend, thin as a wing,
looked at me and said,
this must be so hard on you,

I shook-off that boney layer.

I let that be her last gift to me.

My neighbor keeps everything clean,
    fixes everything;
has dropped his wife’s name; turned her into a pronoun.

She’s living with someone else,
he says without my asking.

Every morning a chickadee flings itself
against the window—fighting its reflection—
defending against itself.

Today, at the mail box, my neighbor said,
she’s not coming back.





About the Poet:

Joy Gaines-Friedler’s work is widely published in journals, including Rattle, Margie, The New York Quarterly, and others. Her first full-length book of poetry, Like Vapor, was published by Mayapple Press (2008). Joy teaches creative writing for non-profits in the Detroit area including Springfed Arts and Common Ground where she works with families of victims of homicide.




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....Andrew C. Gottlieb

Ritual Leavings


We went to your stone and waited.
      The snow showed our past,
             gave us away in our giving.

Block letters, bright sun, frozen grass.
     Winter was listening
           while we lined our things

along the short granite cliff.
     Three chocolates in lockstep,
          a latte, a small happy Buddha,

the three dollar kind in red plastic
     with his bag and his look.
          A small book of poems.

The only thing missing: the photos,
     your smiling. This losing
           dismantles our notions of wholeness:

cold fingers, a frivolous mingling,
     a single crow hunched in an oak.
        Who’s not lonely in the cold?

The trees have retreated excepting the firs
      with their green skirts and thin leaves.
           Needles, the decline, goodbyes, pine

scent. You’ve left us behind
     to a ritual leaving. A comb,
         a coin, an orchid, bone whistles.

A milling of beliefs at the coldest
      of stone, our clinging past
            like a piling, a raft, and a rope.






About the Poet:

Andrew C. Gottlieb works and writes in Irvine, California, and loves the southwest climate, though he spent 9 years in Seattle and misses the rain and ferries. His work is published in many
journals and in his chapbook, Halflives (New Michigan Press, 2005). These poems are from Ritual Leavings, a recent semi-finalist for the Philip Levine Award. Andrew does a pretty good job at his day gig, but avoids it as much as possible; instead spending time outdoors with his wife and two stepchildren, or with his books: reading and writing.   



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....Rio Cortez

                          SALT LAKE

This is the place!                    Space is the place.

-Brigham Young                      -Sun Ra



I slip the silksac of my body    & walk out     onto the flats
the air a machine      sucking earth into fragments of white    absorbing heat 
      finding me    starting to burn


I kneel at the shore      I reach into the lake     it is red   as a cut    
      I reach into the wound of it     I drag out    its string of black   
bones     and now I am two     times the dark  


I crush skeletons    of artemia underfoot   I eat eggs    in stasis the dead    lake idles
the city       surrounds    what weapons we are    I fold the net  of my shadow   I keep it
   as evidence





About the Poet:

Rio Cortez has received fellowships from Cave Canem & Canto Mundo Foundations. She was a recipient of the Sarah Lawrence College Lucy Grealy Prize in Poetry and the 2012 Poets & Writers Amy Award. She is a graduate of the MFA program at New York University & co-founder of the Good Times Collective. Her work has appeared in Clementine, Tuesday, Tidal Basin, Sugar House Review, Cratelit & Saul Williams' Chorus. Born & raised in Salt Lake City, she now loves & lives in Queens, NY.


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....Matthew Ivan Bennett

“The Mormons Are The Only Utopia That Ever Worked.”

—Peter Drucker, Deseret News, January 13, 2010 

On a pew in 1983 I believed this, but now the imagined bonnets are
slow to smile. Years converted me from organ strains into sympathy for
wife number seven who stares over cracked wheat, eyes full of Goshute
wilderness.

She rides West, expecting snowmelt to bleach Temple clothes—but the
chill only taunts. Bites down to bone with its questions.

Yet Seven lasts the interrogation, & spring water calls the woman upward,
to uncorseted yellow pine, where she gulps down the crystal syllable of
“No.”

Once inside her, the sound rips Masonic stitching from her underwear.
Gold-plated dreams fall through the holes.





About the Poet:

Matthew Ivan Bennett began writing at 10 when he saw a writer on TV in a comfy green sweater. Through years of commitment Matt earned his own green sweater, and wears it while workshopping plays with Plan-B Theatre and jumping on the mini-tramp serving as his office chair. His poetry has been published with Kolob Canyon Review, Western Humanities Review, and Mixer.



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...Elijah Burrell

Bones

I.
At school, my daughter made a skeleton:
She cut little swabs of ribs, toes, and eyes,
broken Q-Tips held down by slick-smooth pearls
of glue against matte black construction paper.

II.
Flipping channels from the couch, we see a show
about Africa. Perhaps we’ll learn about lions.
As corpses appear, I quickly cover her eyes.
I click off the TV, amazed at my lapse.
Quiet seconds pass. Then, “Daddy, what
was that?”

III.
Sixty-five thousand fled the church, stampeded
to the school, the grave of masses. Armed with dirt
clods and rocks, fingernails and teeth, no match
for the Hutus. Then they watched each other die.
There’s a place called Murambi, where the walls are lined
with the bones of babies. Eggshell skulls are cracked.
Shivers of femurs. Fractured ulnae.

IV.
Saying grace, I feel the bones in my daughter’s hand.
The Q-Tip skeleton stares from the fridge.



About the Poet:
Elijah Burrell holds his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. His writing has appeared in Measure, The Sugar House Review, Structo, Swink Magazine, Cedars, The Country Dog Review, and many others. He received the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry and the 2010 Jane Kenyon Scholarship at Bennington College. Recently, two of his poems were featured on The Missouri Review’s audio podcast. Burrell teaches creative writing and literature at Lincoln University and resides in Jefferson City, Missouri with his wife and two little girls.



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...Julia Bouwsma

Bodil The Animal Lover  

Bodil Joensen was a Danish pornographic actress who also ran a small farm and animal husbandry business. Known for performing acts of bestiality with her dogs, stallion, and boar in footage that was exploited for numerous pornographic films, she died in 1985 as the result of alcoholism and possible suicide.

In the old pictures, I am solemn-faced—my hand
is around the neck of my collie, knobby
knees under my school kilt. Always,

I stand apart from the other children.

•

Escape was simply anywhere out of Moder’s gaze.

At twelve, it was the Hundige train station. There were always
stray dogs there, and I kept crusts of bread in my pocket.
One day, I sat watching two dogs sniffing
each other under the tail, circling, sniffing
each other’s asses again,

when a man saw me watching.
I said, Wouldn’t it be funny if people greeted each other that way?

The man and I talked until someone told Moder.
Moder called the police.
The man, a known pedophile,
was sent to jail.

Moder thought I’d been raped, so she beat me in the attic
to let the Devil out.

I raged in the attic for days—
it seems the devil did not want to leave me. I screamed,
When I grow up, I’ll fuck boars!

I did not live with Moder much longer after that.

•

Dogs just lick when they want to lick—

Spot is my friend. Alone
in the house, without heat or light,
we go to bed together. We share
a biscuit, talk until we fall asleep.

She understands what I am.

•

During his first mating, a boar must be taught
to make love.

At the breeding center, it is my job to teach him.

Young boars run together develop bad habits,
the most common—servicing
the rectum.

It is my job to ensure vaginal entry, also
that he does not mount the front end
of the sow.

The development of his confidence is vital.

•

The farmers’ wives all hate me.
Their husbands all try to screw me.
I do not let them,

but the money stops coming in:
the farm rent due
and then the truck…

Finally, one day, I go
to Copenhagen to
answer the ad.

•

When the movie men come from far away: America, Japan,

I welcome them all.




• Some language from the third section is adapted from a 1980 interview: http:// bit.ly/RaxcK. Some language in the fourth section is adapted from an article on pig husbandry: http://bit.ly/HHU1nw. 


About the Poet: 

Julia Bouwsma's poems and reviews have appeared in publications such as Colorado Review, Cutthroat, The Progressive, Puerto del Sol, Weave Magazine, and Wisconsin Review. A self-employed writer, editor, teacher, and farmer, she lives off-grid in the mountains of western Maine. More information about her work can be found at www.juliabouwsma.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....Stephanie E. Schlaifer

Similitude

The room that they
have brought us to
is dark            you cannot
see the body
     not because of this
but because of this
you might expect
a service       someone
to officiate
but it’s nothing
but waiting
you and the room’s
true elephant
handsome as a piece
of furniture   accordingly
appointed           Purposely,
no one is looking
in it           Ask why
it is so dark
why the room
is red       why
the room is always
red      and gracious
as a hotel bar
a red room
like the one
on television         heavy
curtains covering
false windows
a riddle in its sleep
which hastens you
to navigate
an opening              Imagine then
an otherwise clear
night in winter
sharp glass
a quarter-mile from the
Fort George
Island Bridge
the glove compartment
splintering
her chest                  And now
so many visitors
cake makeup
a barricade
of tacky wreaths
If navy blue
is dark enough
ask why
you cannot
see the body





About the Poet:
Stephanie E. Schlaifer is originally from Atlanta, GA and works as an artist and freelance editor in St. Louis, MO. She received her BFA in sculpture and BA in English literature from Washington University in St. Louis, and an MFA in poetry from the University of lowa. Stephanie is a combative Boggler and a compulsive baker. It is rumored that two men once arm-wrestled each other to death for the last slice of her pecan pie. She is currently working on a series of poems about historical weather events and a collection of children’s books in verse.


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....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.

Katherine Hollander: Poem

POEM

And if I sing of snow, it won’t be poisoned,
falling on gravestones and in rivers.
And if I mention grandfathers, they won’t drool
from wheelchairs, unless they’re stolen wheelchairs,
they won’t bounce anyone on their knee, they won’t
be fallen gods. They’ll all be old warlocks and Reds,
telling you how it used to be. All the snakes
St. Patrick cast out of Ireland will be there, and the wolves
got themselves hunted out of England, they’re
there, too. The lovers I mean won’t be
the silent-curses type, hating one another weakly
over dirty dishes, they’ll be fucking in libraries,
reaching for one another over the old beloved volumes.
In this song I’m making for you, darling, a tree
is a living birch and it’s a canoe that you can steer
around the pink rocks in silver water, and nobody murdered
the old Commune of Paris, they’re still there, making
their ecstatic decisions, emancipating every
baguette and demitasse, every precious tiny cuillère.
This song has a house for you, my love, tucked among
pagan tenenbaums, each ablaze with an angel, her foot
just touching the topmost branch like a white owl.


About the poet:

Katherine Hollander has published poems in Slate, Literary Imagination, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. She is a PhD candidate in modern European history at Boston University.


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.