The Sound of Sugar....Laura Stott

INTO THE BLUE

At the edge of a boat dock
the blue nudes look far down a ladder—
 
to where it hits surface glass.
They can see rungs barely

waver as their blue heads peer
over. Their own eyes

and the stars reflect in dark tide.
It seems they will be climbing

down into sky, one
blue nude after another.

It couldn’t feel anymore night.
Seals swim in their black

milky way. Sky ripples
with the color glaciers create.

One moon bathed, barnacled
rung at a time, the blue nudes

disappear, past mussels
in their blue shells,

kelp tangled in mid-air.
One nude stops at the rim

before arranging herself
over the side—torso twists,

as hands cling. She looks back.
It is this leaving that’s beginning.

Her hair blows in the wind.


ABOUT THE POET:

Laura Stott received her MFA from Eastern Washington University and she teaches writing at Weber State University. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellingham Review, Sugar House Review, and are forthcoming in Crate.

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 Landrum

BLUE LAWS

Sarah’s hair freezes in the winter wind as we walk down
the hill to the corner store forgetting blue strictures

that say you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays
before noon. See—

sometimes it’s not conscience that keeps us
from falling. Forgetfulness

and luck too have a share
in our salvation. This morning leaves us

high and dry. We kill half an hour, observe the icicles
hanging from the spire of St. Mary’s,

wander the neighborhood, past the alleyway
where, years ago, I knelt and prayed for God

to end me. My vomit wouldn’t freeze,
even though it was ten below. And I walked out

leaving that afterbirth of a new life
steaming on the pavement and thought I was finished

with all that forever. But we live on
the edge of a precipice, always one step away

from ourselves. Sarah’s pixie hair freezes
in December, still wet with showering. And when we return

home and sit with six packs by the fire,
it will steam.


ABOUT THE POET:

Matthew Landrum teaches Latin and literature in Ann Arbor. His poems have recently appeared in The Emerson Review and Cold Mountain 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....Kristen Clanton

METRONOME

The peacock devours his plume absently
as the mermaid falters posture among sinking swells—

black lines that separate air from cloud from bird,
tree from leaf from root, tiny pictures painted black.
Hung in strict rows for me to chart your path,
I follow you foolishly to the sea.

Closer, I can feel the gloom’s yawning breath.
Closer and the dawn’s golden nod escapes the wire.

Compass misplaced and panic where sleep should be.


ABOUT THE POET:

Kristen Clanton is an adventurer, defenseless only to gravity and the subconscious. She graduated from the University of Nebraska, earning an MFA in poetry. Her poetry and short fiction have been published by Bicycle Review, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Burlesque Press, MadHat Drive-By Book Reviews, MadHat Lit, Midnight Circus, The Outrider Review, Ragazine, Quilt, and Sugar House Review. She has work forthcoming in The Mangrove Review and Otto Magazine. You can see to all that here: http://www.kristenclanton.com and contact her here: kristen.clanton@gmail.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....John A. Nieves

Backward Binoculars And Postage for Corpses

I’m all eyes and indigo

inking signatures in light and language,

riddles sewn into the bottom of busy tongues.

Strangers press their teeth together,

a clack in place of lips.

The underbelly of the morning

grinds against the back of the world—

long-distance casualties propped against broken shovels.

I lick the inside of their eyelids and seal them—

hope they get where they need to go.

About the Poet:

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and minnesota review. He won the 2011 Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio (2014), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

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....Liz Kay

Midwife—The Witch Dabbles in Healing

The boy came on a summer morn, shouldered

his bloody way out while the woman groaned like a cow.

He nearly fell into my hands, sticky, still warm

from the womb. I pressed him to his mother’s breast

to shush his cries. All the while, the blood swelled

out of her, as from an animal cut clean. Her hand

at the child’s head grew languid and dropped

to the bed, and the infant lost his grip, slipped

into her limp arm, squalling at the nipple beyond.

I brewed a tea heavy with ergot and oak bark, spooned

it through her lips, but still she bled. I knew some piece

of the caul must have stuck fast inside her.

I scraped it free with my fingers, massaged

her belly till I felt it start to tighten, fed her what I could

of the afterbirth until she roused enough to spit it out.

Awake finally, she wept over the child, put him back

on her breast. I gave her stew made of lamb

and when they had both eaten and she slept, I took

the boy from her arms and breathed him in, memorized

his scent. Hansel, she mumbled from her dream. I turned

my back to her and licked him clean.

About the Poet:

A founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal burntdistrict, Liz Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient of both an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wendy Fort Foundation Prize for exemplary work in poetry. In 2008, she was awarded a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for excellence in lyric poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Nimrod, Willow Springs, The New York Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Redactions, and Sugar House 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....Joel Long

Let The Living Return To The Sea

Last night we watched a baby octopus

on video with a child. It had washed

ashore the border of tide, white water

the water’s distance from air. Living thing

moved a line of coral foam, undulating

tentacled legs, water retreating to its mouth,

gliding its spectral torso over glazed sand.

We come to this town to bury the dead,

but dinner, we hear two births will come,

and the dead take turns at quiet instead.

There are photos, printouts from ultrasounds—

mothers and mothers to be for the first

pass images around the table. One niece

has a baby inside that could be an octopus,

bulge of light rounding like a head—it is a head—

a shadow that will be eyes, but the hands

wave flippers in ink and legs like a tail

in the gray sea, the precise hope for fingers,

toes, and bones. The miracle brain inside

space the size of a pearl begins to steam,

begins the vision.

The other niece is showing,

stomach swelling beneath her blue dress,

the child inside her with limbs, hands already

brought to its mouth, a face becoming its face,

one of us. In the photo, we see ribs, translucent

skin over ribs, hips hiding—we will know

in weeks, she, he, sex blooming the waters.

Another child has been watching the octopus,

has put on the mask of a monster, climbs the back

of Auntie’s chair, his red hair no brighter than fire

he puts into space. He knows the small thing

in the darkness comes for him, sister, brother,

love, this self coming, sacred book illustrated

by the monk who studies shells and moth wings,

saints and all their signs, angel, bird, ox, and lion,

and we know the cells find their way to hair,

fingernails, eyes that change the muted world

into forests inside the brain, octopus pulled

back into the entire sea by wave, pulsing heart

of all water, drawing it inside, pushing against it,

propelling its body through distance that lasts,

the bright coral, clown fish, eels, above water,

sky wrapped around the globe and the mind

that writes it all down in grief, in joy, Being

itself, brief and infinite, raspberry, sparrow.

About the Poet:

Joel Long’s book Lessons in Disappearance was published in 2012. Knowing Time by Light was published by Blaine Creek Press in 2010. His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published in 1999. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Rhino, Bitter Oleander, Crab Orchard Review, Bellingham Review, Sou’wester, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, Po­ems and Plays, and Seattle Review, and anthologized in American Poetry: the Next Generation, Essential Love, Fresh Water, and I Go to the Ruined Place. He received the Mayor’s Artist Award for Literary Arts at the Utah Arts Festival and the Writers Advocate Award from Writers at Work.

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.