Sunday, July 24, 2022

LEONA SEVICK—"HAPA" (Issue 24)

HAPA

Taking my order by phone, she asks me

What do you look like? So I can find you?

Except that’s not how she says it. Dropping

words the way my Korean mother does,

still making herself understood, she waits

while I decide. Pausing, as I do, as

I have done since the first time someone asked

me with genuine interest what are you?

I answer this woman in a way I

know already she will never accept,

take the chance I never take. Yes, she says,

I think I know you. Spotting her just as

she comes through the door, I wait for her to

scan the room, find me and then decide. She

approaches, tosses bags on the table,

mouths the word I know she’s thinking, the word

I’ve heard a dozen times. Hapa. It is

the one my mother hates, the reason why

I was grown before she took me home to

meet her people. I see her stiff face, black

eyes of resentment at their turned backs, their

conditional love. Now I speak the truth

of who I am, or at least half of who

I am. This woman receives from me a

wide smile. I thank her, watch her go knowing

half a truth is better than any lie.




ABOUT THE POET

Leona Sevick is a professor of English at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where 
she teaches Asian American literature (she is an Asian American poet). Sevick was 
named a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Fellow for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and 
serves on the advisory board of the Furious Flower Black Poetry Center.


 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, July 10, 2022

ARAH KO—"CULLET" (Issue 24)

Sugar House Review · Arah Ko's "Cullet"

CULLET


I’ve swallowed glass for every bottle

you drank. Call me terror. Call me

reckonings you looked for

in the bathroom mirror. Call

 

me shit that oughta been slapped

out of you younger, before the old

men touched you in a stained-

glass cathedral. Call me window

 

broken by your ruined knuckles. My

blood is your blood; my nose is your

mother’s nose. Compared to you, I am

summer that never ends, tempered glass,

 

a nest of unhatched eggs. I say hello & you

pray my name back to me.



ABOUT THE POET 

Arah Ko hails from an active volcano but is currently based in the Midwest. Her 
recent work has appeared in SiderealFugueGrimoire, and New Reader 
Magazineamong others. Arah is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the Ohio 
State University where she serves as Wheeler Prize editor for The JournalWhen 
not writing, Arah can be found correcting her name pronunciation or making a 
mean pot of coffee. Catch her at ArahKo.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.