The Sound of Sugar

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.