CRAIG BLAIS, "MY FIRST SONNET ON ZOLOFT®" (Issue 17)

MY FIRST SONNET ON ZOLOFT®

“NORMAL” she writes in quotes like it isn’t measure-

able, then she draws a straight black line across the white board: ______________

“All your life,” she says, “or at least since fifteen years old—

you’ve been down around here, with feelings of displeasure,

panic, social anxiety disorder, depression,

thoughts of suicide, alcohol dependency, and a general

sense of pointlessness. There have been, incidentally,

brief periods of time where you dropped even

lower to what’s called a “MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE,”

bringing you somewhere more like down here: ____________________________

for the span of several months or up to a year.”

I nod politely. Twice now since I’ve devoted

myself to this, after paying $8 and leaving,

a live oak has broken the sun into a million tiny pieces.

ABOUT THE POET

Craig Blais’ is the author of About Crows (University of Wisconsin Press). His poems have appeared in Western Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and other places.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.

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EMMA AYLOR, "NORTH HILLS" (Issue 17)

NORTH HILLS

I am cracking the egg in my

hand on my chest a thousand ways

today, on the bench I like by

the pansies. What was there

felt all for me, the time of morning

between rush hour and lunch

break, all but the backed-in delivery trucks

gone still and inside. A warm wind started

stirring that felt closer to nature

than to the office buildings, as if

coming up from some creek. I wished

to hear a train whistle for the simple

papered unfolding of longing a person feels

going anyplace good and strange. I am missing

this place early and too easily; where it used

to be I’d hold it all closed I’ve instead

extended this open space in me out.

ABOUT THE POET

Emma Aylor is the author of the chapbook Twos (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared inHandsome, the Adirondack Review, Two Serious Ladies, Vinyl, and elsewhere.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

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.

JOSÉ ANGEL ARAGUZ, "ON THE TIMES I DON’T REMEMBER THE RIGHT WORDS FOR THINGS" (Issue 17)

ON THE TIMES I DON’T REMEMBER THE RIGHT WORDS FOR THINGS

Tonight, leaving work after a double shift,

   what is left to say on my walk home,

in and out of conversation with myself,

dims and leaves me surprised: hone o oru,

   a phrase I read, I couldn’t say when,

comes back clearly, scratched across a book’s flyleaf

with the words it might translate to in English

   (to break your bones, or to have a bone

broken) in pencil scrawled and smudged beside it,

as if whoever tried to work it out stopped,

   unable to choose between doing

the breaking and being broken, and left both

phrases for me like answers to a riddle

   no one is around to ask, and which

I no longer have the breath to decipher,

unable to read the growing night against

   the headlights of oncoming traffic,

each pair of lights indifferent, reading past me—

another breath slips, breaks my conversation,

   words again have a falling leaves feel:

the feel of a foot driven into the air

of a missing step, that braced stagger, the feel

   of reaching for a door you thought closed

only to find it open, your artless hand

on the air you have to walk through to move on.

ABOUT THE POET

José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and author of seven chapbooks as well as the collectionsEverything We Think We Hear (Floricanto Press) and Small Fires (FutureCycle Press). His writing has appeared in Crab Creek Review and Prairie Schooner. He runs The Friday Influence and teaches at Linfield College.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

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.

PETER KRUMBACH, “THE SMITH’S DINNER PARTY” (Issue 17)

THE SMITH'S DINNER PARTY

​

Sitting on the window sill, the possum

peers through the glass, its rough smile

bared at the large-buttocked maid

who cooks and does not see it.

What’s in the pot? it asks. The moon

makes its fur almost white. Will you

feed me the way you did last night?

It sits and sucks the dark slowly

into its tiny brain. The kitchen’s light

is yellow. A man walks in and stands

beside the woman. He strokes her breast

and looks at the possum. I have thirteen

nipples, the possum says, but the man

is dumb and tipsy. He just stares

at the possum’s teeth. They remind him

of organ pipes. The woman keeps stirring

the pot with a large wooden spoon, her

other hand on the man’s crotch. His wife sits

in the next room with guests, who bore one

another pleasantly with tales of their lives,

which they don’t consider sad.

The possum doesn’t move, still hoping

to get its apple. It seems it will have to wait

until the dumb man spasms in a little dance.

People, thinks the possum, the weight

of its young warm on its back. It wants to

shout at the two behind the glass, but

its voice is small, smaller than an egg.

ABOUT THE POET

Peter Krumbach was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia Poetry Review, RHINO, Salamander Review, and elsewhere. Diane Seuss selected his prose poem “Fugitive” as the Mid-American Review 2017 Fineline Competition winner. He lives in Del Mar, CA.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

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.

CINDY VEACH, "YOU WOULD BE FORGIVEN IN THINKING THAT YOU CAN SEE THE WHOLE OF THE MOON" (Issue 17)

YOU WOULD BE FORGIVEN IN THINKING THAT YOU CAN SEE THE WHOLE OF THE MOON 

​

Because only 59% of the moon’s surface is visible from Earth 

there is still reason to believe in cheese. Indulge me please.

We may see only the nearside, but that nine percent beyond one-half 

is hard fought territory existing only in the libration zones 

​

where our lunar buddy gently wobbles in Earth’s sky 

playing at peek-a-boo with the naked eye. And while nothing 

​

has gone uncharted, to observe this bonus acreage, 

is to see around corners a little way around the east and west 

​

limb and over the north and south and to be able to distinguish 

craters foreshortened and edge-on. Yet still, we’re missing 

​

forty-one percent. Math may be my nemesis, but I get this. 

We don’t know what we’re missing. More than knick-knacks 

​

and photos deep-sixed in the attic. What about every crater 

never noticed, never explored? So many grainy possibilities 

​

forgone. Close your eyes and look hard at the moon tonight. 

I was only joking about the cheese. What I meant to say 

​

was there is still reason to believe that at any given moment 

for whatever reason there is more than meets the eye. 

****

​

Title and quotes (in italics) from: https://www.spaceanswers.com/astronomy/how-much-of-the-moons-surface-can-we-see-from-earth/

ABOUT THE POET

Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, Nov. 2017). Her poetry has appeared inAGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. She manages fundraising programs for non-profit organizations and lives in Manchester by the Sea, MA.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.

DAYNA PATTERSON, "SELF-PORTRAIT AS MIRANDA WITH XENOPHILIA AND APOSTASY" (Issue 17)

SELF-PORTRAIT AS MIRANDA WITH XENOPHILIA AND APOSTASY

The world begins with yes.

—Terry Tempest Williams

After a short courtship, we wed,
all according to Father’s plan,
then left the island—and Father—behind.

No, that’s not how the story goes.
But it’s how this story goes.

We left him with his angel
-conveyed magic books, his staff
unbroken, his Urim and Thummim
to translate the ancient
urge. We left old

feuds, martyrs who traversed
the waters, who pioneered
their way here. Loathe to leave,
we left, Prospero’s promises broke
like stormclouds pouring
pitch and feathers. Peeling them off,
we left cells—strata of ourselves—behind.

We left, stealthing Ariel and Caliban along,
misfits who burned to serve
no god but their gut, Ariel at the helm steering toward expanse,
Caliban in the crow’s nest aiming at the unnameable.

Brave? The ship tilted full bore toward horizon, the ledge
of a new world.

ABOUT THE POET

Writer, editor, and logophile, Dayna Patterson makes her home in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her MFA from Western Washington University, where she served as the managing editor of Bellingham Review. She is the poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine and the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. Her literary obsessions include poetry and spirituality, and women in Shakespeare. DaynaPatterson.com

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.

ANTHONY WARNKE, "NEVADA" (Issue 17)

NEVADA

I want it all. Accept that.
I want breakfast in bed
and the lights on
later. I need to be
needed, not bothered,
bathed in double
positives: maple
bacon, ground
round, good clown
sense. I want hugs
and drugs, a taut
morning in a Jesuit
study. I want kids
that cannot die,
my big break,
a double-whip
Frappuccino.
I want to go
to heaven broke, so
I’m paying the price
in Reno.

ABOUT THE POET

Anthony Warnke’s previous work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, and The Prose Poem Project. He teaches writing at Green River College and lives in Seattle.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.

TAMARA L. PANICI, "ONCE YOU KNOW A THING EXISTS" (Issue 17)

ONCE YOU KNOW A THING EXISTS

Mama, what if I’m just another version 

of you? What if we’re all just fucked up

versions of the original beast? 

Because I want to be my own beast, I don’t know 

how to make mămăligă like you do. 

I don’t know how to not add butter and salt. 

Don’t you see? Half of me is Americancă

I’m a piece of corn between two tight teeth.

Here the wanderer only goes in circles

and hands are always dried out from 

scrubbing the world’s sinks, turned 

hard and tight like ribbons of old dead snakes.

Bring a gift no matter what and always

take your shoes off in the house, says Mama.

The clocks are all wrong again, says the sun 

to the moon, If you listen, I’ll tell you when.

You make mămăligă like this: boil water 

then add cornmeal. The sun says, Start now you 

simple beast. Can’t you see the world is hungry?

If you spend afternoons spinning your fingers

around the knob of an old radio, you might 

accidentally tune in to the voice of the 

original beast. You’ll wipe your hands clean

of your thoughts a thousand times, you’ll

rub all the aprons into threads trying 

to figure out why the voice sounds so familiar. 

ABOUT THE POET

Tamara L. Panici’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prelude, Likely Red, Carbon Culture Review, Riggwelter, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2018 River Styx Microfiction Contest and has been chosen to attend the Frost Place Conference on Poetry. You can find her on Twitter @tlpanici.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.

ELIZABETH KNAPP, HUNTER'S MOON (Issue 17)

HUNTER'S MOON, GETTYSBURG

​

I could have believed anything
            that night, on that one-lane
                        country road, the battlefield
            alive with shadows, outlines
                        of worm fences where X

marks the spot, cupolas
            of blackened barns, & beyond,
                        the far slope of Cemetery Hill,
            where ghost troops huddled
                        under the broken moonlight,

& the wind made anguished
            sounds with its breath. Yes,
                        it was still possible for the world
            to surprise me, or rather, it was
                        still possible to surprise myself,

even there, waist-deep

            in the trenches, but crawling
                        my way out, up along the ravaged
            hillside, to where, from a distance,
                        the carnage looked gorgeous.

ABOUT THE POET

Elizabeth Knapp is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, and Quarterly West, among others. She teaches at Hood College in Frederick, MD.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

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.