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.