The Sound of Sugar....Vidhu Aggarwal

umbilical with titles from Vidhu Aggarwal on Vimeo.

Humpadori Umbilical Cord Friend

Euphoria:

I arrive, singly—

prizing

the belly to unfuzz

the static orchestra,

to expand the warm feelings, play jump rope!

A neon pulse—a dimple—wanders

in

and out on you—

Lickety split. Spit and lick

the seal.

Close your eyes. And all the shine will migrate there:

lubing the tube, where the oxygen bells and surges,

ripening incidence, wings,

and miscellaneous

appendages.

Worlds-a-rama lotus out

of your skin and hinges. Soft

Camelots

peep and spore. A door opens.

You’re adored.

You’re another Venus

Hottentot, Venus with fur. It’s almost a dream:

You can always be more than you are—

Since you’re more than you want to be.

I’m your live feed

of nerves dangling, attached and rhyming, going to seed.

If you pluck the grub-end, I might bleed

horizons,

a free-form history, but never free.

About the Poet:

Vidhu Aggarwal grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and Sugar Land Texas, and currently lives and teaches in central Florida. Her poetry and video are a mash-up of cultural forms such as Bollywood, Star Trek, video games, internet porn, anime, minstrel shows, and tourist attractions. Her poems can be found in Sugar House Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Juked, Nimrod, PANK, desi-lit, and interlope among others. Readings and videos are available at the website
www.vidhu-aggarwal.squarespace.com. She is the found editor of SPECS, a journal of arts and culture with issues on Toys, The Perverse, and Homuncular Flexibility – www.specsjournal.org.

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....Kevin McLellan

There's Hard Light and Soft Light

everyday. The same church van

driver insistently honks

for the same elderly lady

dressed for God. My open

3rd floor window faces

the street. The sidewalk

dug up. Now it appears

the same young mouse

I released last week is under

the neck of a red wine bottle

in the recycling bin. Bring it

outside again. Runs clumsily

toward the liquor store.

The bright yellow sign. Yesterday

a man ran out of there

and got hit by a taxi. As the driver

argued with a witness

the man lying conscious across

the yellow lines. Only his left arm

moved. Caressing the bumper

as he looked blankly into the sky.

About the Poet:

Kevin McLellan lives in Cambridge, MA, and sometimes teaches po- etry workshops at URI. He is the author of the chapbook Round Trip, a col- laborative series of poems with numerous women poets. Kevin has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, Sixth Finch, Sugar House Review, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and numerous 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.