SHELBY HANDLER—"BUY THE KNIVES" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · Shelby Handler's "Buy The Knives"

BUY THE KNIVES

All the girls at recess are a gaggle
of little mothers. They’re being horrible
to each other. Imagine them as parents,

punishing their adorable future horribles.
This whole set-up is a set-up: being born
to folks who must betray us to keep us

alive. We end up first-in-line to shovel
soil over their breathless bodies. It’s like,
I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN!

is valid critique. Think about it: what’s not
coercion? Yesterday, I resented the sunset
in my eyes and squinted. Today, I ate splinters

of cold butter and sunflower sprouts on toast. Still
dark outside: this is breakfast in winter.
This is the life I was amputated

into. My mom sighs, Don’t have children. I can’t
love anyone else. Love is an exhausting business
model. A pyramid scheme. We get so far in,

instinct forces us to buy the knives, find stuff
to mince. As a kid, I learned, distraught,
my death will happen on a normal day.

It’s not fair. Life is so full of shit
we love, any blade is too dull to carve us
cleanly out of it. This is the thing

I can’t remember: what my mother said
when I couldn’t stop crying about dying.
Whatever it was— her hands held my face.

She followed it with a question, You wanna go
take your bath? I didn’t have a choice. I nodded.
Yes, I felt myself choose it. I stayed in the tub

until my tiny hands puckered, suddenly ancient. 

ABOUT THE POET 

Shelby Handler is a writer, organizer, and educator living on Duwamish territory/Seattle. A 2019 Richard Hugo House fellow, their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Pacifica Literary Review, Homology Lit, 3Elements Review, and the Write Bloody anthology We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival. Follow them: @shelbeleh

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.

CHELSEA DINGMAN—"WHILE MY BROTHER SPENDS YEARS DRINKING HIMSELF TO DEATH" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · Chelsea Dingman's "While My Brother Spends Years Drinking Himself to Death"

WHILE MY BROTHER SPENDS YEARS DRINKING HIMSELF TO DEATH

The future splits
into atoms in a nuclear facility

we don’t mention
anymore. The hares arrive

in winter as windows.
They come, but they don’t

leave, becoming
landscape as we

sleep. What truth is worth
bearing? People appear as angels

in the distance of the mind.
Perhaps, in the dark,

we leave ourselves in order
to begin. What dark

do we need in order to continue?
The roof shakes

with any weather.
The dead pretend to stay

dead. A body wrests the dark
from the bottom of a lake

so the cold need not be
alone, or unwanted.

 

 

ABOUT THE POET 

Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second book, Through a Small Ghost, won the Georgia Poetry Prize and was published in February 2020. Her recent work can be found in The Southern Review, The
New England Review, and The Kenyon Review, among others.

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.

M.A. SCOTT—"[ANXIETY, LITTLE SISTER]" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · M.A. Scott's "[Anxiety, Little Sister]"

[ANXIETY, LITTLE SISTER]

Anxiety, little sister, look at us, our grips unsteady on the child-proof lids meant to keep us from what we need. We stand still & race at the same time, like there’s a rabbit on the chest thumping lucky feet against the clover of our clavicles. How can we comfort each other over the distance? We tried to save daylight for another time & it left us in the dark, waiting for sleep to come. I lie awake waiting for rest as the ceiling erupts, thighs clenched against the cotton night. Look at us, all grown up & nothing to spend it on. It was easy, once, to sand our edges, watching the football hit Marcia Brady in the nose over & over & over again. Little sister, if anxiety were to leave us, where would that leave us? Sometimes I wish I could just relax & learn to love corn mazes. Soon the crickets will die for the season & I’ll be left counting my breaths, or the tiny white pills that glare at me like lice. No going back to a home we don’t remember losing.

ABOUT THE POET 

M.A. Scott’s poetry has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in The Mid-American Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Adirondack Review, Heron Tree, and Unlost. She grew up in Rhode Island and currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she likes to spend time with trees.

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.