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.