Sunday, December 18, 2022

JENNIFER MANTHEY—"THE FIGHT" (Issue 24)

THE FIGHT


My son’s principal calls on the day
of his first fight. First grade.
A boy pushed him out of line,
and he pushed back. Pushing then hitting—
they are six. A white boy’s father
might say, good for you,
standing up for yourself.
My husband says, there are injustices
coming all the time. Sometimes you have to be
the bigger man. He is six. He cries
in bed, I’m a bad boy, and I hate
America. I hate what I can’t stop
it saying to my son. Outside our window,
a dog passes on a leash and our dog
goes crazy with barking. I don’t
bother to stop her—her nose and teeth
crashing at the glass.




ABOUT THE POET 


Jennifer Manthey's poems have appeared in places such as Crab Orchard Review, 

Best New Poets, Calyx Journal, Prairie Schooner, and Palette Poetry. She teaches 

writing at The Loft Literary Center and North Central University in Minneapolis.




ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 


We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 
poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.

Sunday, December 11, 2022

JAMES DAVIS MAY—"DEPRESSION IN SAINT-MÉLOIR DES ONDES" (Issue 24)


DEPRESSION IN SAINT-MÉLOIR DES ONDES

The donkey my daughter loves
cannot reach the flowers that grow
in the film of soil the ocean breeze
has lifted to the roof of the barn.

We don’t know what they’re called
and speak too little of the language
to ask the farmhand their name,
though we can tell they’re delicious

by the way the donkey cocks its head
to two o’clock toward the roof
and strains its prehensile lips
to almost reach them, an effort

that looks like remembering
a word you can almost remember
how it nearly touches the voice—
“It’s on the tip of my tongue,” we say.

And I don’t know what to say
to myself, or the man I become,
inside those days and nights of hurt
I cannot argue my way out of.

I know it won’t be enough to say,
“Remember the orchard over there,
its plums and cherries, and apples
just forming from the blooms.”

Not enough to remember the tides
we hear beyond the meadow, how
they leave the beach cracked
like ancient porcelain. Not enough

to repeat the Auden lines I muttered
to myself last night at the restaurant
when I felt the depression coming on,
eerie as a suspicion of being watched.

“The lights must never go out,”
I said, “the music must always play.”
And it almost worked: the intoxication
of asking for and receiving the tray

of oysters gleaming like an ornate clock,
then the bouquet of mussels,
and the baked sea bream symmetrical
as a well-wrapped Christmas gift.

But I’ve learned that you can love
pleasure and still want to die
while absolutely not wanting to die,
a situation that requires, if nothing else,

some patience, the precise gentleness
the donkey grants my daughter’s hand
as she offers the wanted flowers
to the mouth that destroys and loves them.



ABOUT THE POET 


James Davis May is a 2021 National Endowment Arts Fellow in creative writing and the author of two poetry collections, both published by Louisiana State University Press: Unquiet Things, which was released in 2016, and Unusually Grand Ideas, forthcoming in 2023. His poetry has appeared in Guernica, The New Republic, Plume, The Southern Review, and other journals. He lives in Macon, GA with his wife, the poet Chelsea Rathburn.




ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 


We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.

Monday, December 5, 2022

BRIAN SATROM—"MULBERRY TREE" (Issue 24)


MULBERRY TREE

Someone playing flute, the music coming from
an open second-floor window,

sky overcast, and we’re in front
of a mulberry tree,
its leaves wet. I need to memorize

the kind of tree it is, a way
of hanging on to this moment.

It’ll be on a test, the one in which I’m likely

to forget what the tree’s called and so
start to lose my connection to the memory, maybe
to memory altogether,

the first loose thread unraveling.
Flute music woven through the branches

and our conversation.
I wonder who even plays flute anymore
but I’m grateful. Love will be

on the test too, or is it the test itself? Love

when the answers
aren’t easy. Love when it’s not all new.


ABOUT THE POET 


Brian Satrom is the author of the poetry collection Starting Againpublished 

by Finishing Line Press in 2020. His poetry has appeared in a variety of journals 

including Cider Press Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, and 

TAB, which nominated his work for a Pushcart Prize. His work has also featured 

on Verse Daily and Vandal Poem of the Day. After completing his MFA at the 

University of Maryland, he lived in Madison, WI, and Los Angeles before settling 

in Minneapolis. His website is BrianSatrom.com.



ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 


We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 
poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.

Sunday, November 6, 2022

AIMEE WRIGHT CLOW—"BLACK AND BLUE FISH" (Issue 24)

BLACK AND BLUE FISH 

after Nick Flynn 

I take curtains off a west-facing window, fold them tightly, peer out into
the open. Not much to see: a dog, a house, a street. Paint a diagram on
the glass with a brush’s bristles fanned so the paint is not too thick, so
light threads through. I feel best with my phone tucked under blankets.
Walk to the store, where I meet a woman who needs just one cup of
flour. Sure. I bring her to my house, give her coffee and one cup of flour
while she tells me of the mountain she has just returned from, all its
height and weight, what a disjuncture returning, and back home she
found a fire had consumed all her old photographs and blankets, leaving
only a brick cocoon and an aluminum-rod bed. Oh dear. I blow over
steam and the dog outside barks. But what of you? she asks. Tell me of
you. I say, Nothing much here. But well, let me show you something. A
detail. Outside we peer through the painted panes as though we are
light. Her face settles, sinks, and she backs away slowly, holding the
flour to her chest. A swampy yard has overtaken my feet, so when I
try to follow, I find I cannot. I cannot leave my feet, so I survey the
yard, which reminds me of a stream. The road: the sound of boats.
The barking dog approaching bites at the swamp around my feet and
my ankles until I am free. I float up the hill as the rains begin, my eyes
still on the window. I don’t know what she saw, of course, what feared.
All the furniture from the side of the road; all the decorations mass
produced. From the outside looking in, I could be anyone, really. But
the bristled paint; the panes. I look away from the house to my hands
where the flour in the rain has become batter. I look down at my feet,
which are fish now. I look down to the yard, a river. I look to the house,
my boat, my home. I float. I go inside, unbury my phone from its bed of
rest. I wish to know what makes one one. I ask the internet. Who’s afraid
of? Battered fish sticks. Recipes for. Fear? It’s only a word. Run? It’s only
time. Take time. Rest. Your boat awaits. The dog barks. It’s bobbing
outside the painting. I open the window.




ABOUT THE POET 


Aimee Wright Clow is a writer and book designer living in Durham, NC with their 

cats, Bifo and Susan G. Their writing and video poems have appeared in journals 

including Salt Hill, The Bennington Review, [PANK], A Gathering of the Tribes, 

Can We Have Our Ball Back, Ghost Proposal, and The Lifted Brow. Their book arts 

project, A Brief Map of Albany, is available from Utilities Included.



ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 


We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 
poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.

Sunday, October 16, 2022

STELIOS MORMORIS—"BARLEY" (Issue 21)

BARLEY


  Tournedos of barley

    crammed into thick honey 

laced with thyme, stubborn


  in the roof of your mouth

    and how it grows on you, 

after penitent flows of salad 


  of cucumber and olive oil.

    And how its crumble like sand 

reminds you of the 


  arid blanched cliffs

    of the Cyclades of your parents—

A few slippery kernels


  drop back to the paper plate. 

    And it's always the barley, 

nimble as beads


  from a snapped necklace, 

    whose misgivings you scoop 

in your hand under the sermon 


  for the dead at mass, 

    a palmful of religion

you raise your wanting mouth, 


  the barley graced 

    with powdered sugar 

to soften the blow 


  she was dead 

    while we ate in the pew 

together, children again, 


  crying and swallowing

    at the same time, 

while the altar boys 


  presided over a parade 

    of more tins of barley 

from chapel turned kitchen 


  stirring this mixture

    the sugar binding the barley 

brown to white, dirt 


  to dreams, consuming it down

    with red wine slipping 

from the gold spoon 


  along the cheek, worse

    than tears, whose trails

you still follow. 




ABOUT THE POET 


Stelios Mormoris is a resident of Boston and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, 
and formerly lived in Paris most of his life, working as an executive in the 
beauty industry. Stelios is currently Chief Executive Officer of Scent Beauty, Inc. 
He studied architecture at Princeton University, where he received his BA, and he 
received his MBA from INSEAD (Institut d’Européen d’Administration des 
Affaires) in Fontainebleau, France. He has held positions on the boards of the 
French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic New England, and The 
Fragrance Foundation. Stelios is also a contemporary artist, specializing in abstract 
oil painting: www.steliosmormoris.com. His interests range from rugby to sailing 
to gardening, while continuing his passion for reading and writing poetry. 
The Oculus is his debut collection of poetry.



ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 
poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.

Sunday, October 2, 2022

LAURA RUBY—"WHAT TO SAY AFTER A CERTAIN KIND OF MAN BEGS FOR HIS LIFE" (Issue 24)

WHAT TO SAY AFTER A CERTAIN KIND OF MAN BEGS FOR HIS LIFE


“Mantids are sometimes called praying mantids or soothsayers
(Greek, manti = soothsayer) because their forelegs are held in
a supplicatory position resembling prayer. Nearly 2,000 species
have been described.”
 
—Timothy J. Gibb, Contemporary Insect Diagnostics
 
When I tell you you’re a snack I mean
for real. Look at you. You got the motion,
that roll and roll swagger. The way you swivel
your head and track me with those big red eyes—
you see what I’m not: the petal-limbed orchid,
the dancing devil’s flower, hands up. No unicorns
here, either; I’m just like other girls. And I’m not
a leaf or a ghost, I couldn’t hide if I wanted to.
I pray out in the open. I can leap like a cat, adapt

in mid-air. I can tear a hummingbird right out
of the blue, a different kind of honeyeater. Isn’t
that what you came for? You already lost your
head for me, though you’ll tell yourself it’s all
for the thrill, all for the kids. And when I turn
back for that first kiss, you’ll ignore every
warning, even the last: My God, look at you.
Look at what you made me do. 




ABOUT THE POET 


Laura Ruby is primarily a novelist with eleven books published, including 
Bone Gap (Balzer & Bray, HarperCollins, 2015) and Thirteen Doorways, 
Wolves Behind Them All (Balzer & Bray, HarperCollins, 2019), both National 
Book Award Finalists. Her short fiction has appeared in The Florida Review
Pleiades, and Beloit Fiction Journal, among other magazines, and she has 
poetry in Clockhouse Vol. 8 and forthcoming in Poetry Online. Currently, 
Laura teaches writing at Hamline University and is an MFA candidate in 
poetry at Queens University.



ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
opportunity to better hear our contributors. We're featuring audio recordings of 
poems from our pages, read by the poet. 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.