Friday, May 22, 2015

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. 

Saturday, May 9, 2015

The Sound of Sugar....Sara Henning


Angry

Because ice sheens from the floor now, I’m not calling this a he just
finished sieging the kitchen kind of angry. I’m not even calling this
a I’m on my knees palming the wreckage of snow kind of angry,
though I’m on my knees.

I’m telling you, it’s not the door slamming afterward that’s holding
me here, like I’m stunned by linoleum. It’s his boots, too scarred to
become arbiters, mapping the breach of dirt and sole.

Tell me you don’t understand this wipe up the floor with his shirt
kind of angry, this bury it in the yard afterwards kind of angry.

I can’t help thinking about my grandmother riding her Schwinn four
miles to the liquor store to buy my grandfather’s booze, the way she
believed him when he told her she was too stupid to drive.

I can’t stop thinking about the line the tires must have made in win-
­ter—snow grafted to rubber, bits of asphalt smiting the bevel, even the
dark stripe always left in the wake. She never talked about the trash bag
poncho thrown over her coat, throb of leather seat between her legs,
or a whole afternoon of pedaling through slurries of salt. I learned to
imagine her leaning harshly on the turn radius, perfecting the gyro-
­scopic procession, to correct for the bottles obscuring the wind.

Imagine yourself removing your shoes in the garage, so he’ll never
see how salt can stain. Go ahead, toss the poncho onto a hook, cos-
­set the shoes with cloth and vinegar, know the salt’s there for good.

Anything can happen when you fall too far into the arms of a hard
winter. Anything.

So, this lattice-work kind of angry, this needle moving between your
heart and your bones kind of angry, tell me you’ve felt this, too.

My hands are grasping the shirt’s worn cotton. I’m touching the
door, there’s dirt stung into the linoleum’s fleur-de-lis. Dark’s now
fouling the heraldry of jade and barley.

Can’t you see he’s turned me into his river? Can’t you see I’ve become a
part of his flood? There’s transgressions that didn’t leave with his body.

Tell me it’s like salt worn into linen, the man in him like an ice floe, a
fast moving impasse over water.



About the Poet:
Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink, 2013), as well as a chapbook, To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her po­etry, fiction, interviews, and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Verse, Willow Springs, and Crab Orchard Review. Currently a doctoral student in English and creative writing at the University of South Dakota, she serves as managing editor for South Dakota 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.