PHILIP SCHAEFER—"X NIHILO" (Issue 24)

Sugar House Review · Philip Schaefer's "X Nihilo"

X NIHILO

You’re akin to a kitten on fire. Your hair harpoons
black barb & lily irons without release. Release
me. Late at night the neighborhood ducks huddle.
I polish my nails with tar. I read the ceiling for progress,
purpose. You’re somewhere in this dark
Sistine Chapel dancing with an ice cube on your tongue,
a Molotov cocktail & the lit matchsticks your pupils become
when the sky goes blank with sin. I don’t want to be
in your room again. I bury myself in the spaces
between spaces with glue & a dirty cue ball. I land in every pocket.
I cannot escape the wet dryer sheets or the Polaroid of the treasure
map of your forehead. Tell me the one where the clay pigeon is tossed high
& the rifle is cocked & I’m the bullet & you’re the shatter & the sun
fiddles the song that creates beauty out of such a loud nothing.



ABOUT THE POET
Philip Schaefer’s collection Bad Summon (University of Utah Press, 2017) won 

the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, while individual poems have won contests 

published by The Puritan, Meridian, and Passages North. His work has also been 

featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in The Poetry Society of America. He 

recently opened a regionally focused Mexican restaurant called The Camino in 

Missoula, MT.

 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.

NICK MARTINO—"OPEN HEART SURGERY" (Issue 24)

Sugar House Review · Nick Martino's "Open Heart Surgery"

OPEN HEART SURGERY 

Bowing in their paper crowns, the surgeons
settle down for dinner
in the dining room of my father’s body.
A good son, I set the table: bone china, copperware.
The silver gently gleaming. I don’t know what to do
about the heart, that horn of plenty.
In the myth, infant Zeus breaks the horn
of the she-goat who nurses him.
Her name means Run to tenderness.
My father’s body is the book
of worship on the table, open
to a razor-thin page, warmed
by strangers’ hands. He is the winter apples
I offer our guests, an orchard—
red curtain I hide behind.
Ashamed, Zeus blesses the horn
with infinite abundance. This teaches me
to apologize with both hands: Dad,
I haven’t called you in thirty-three days.
I eat well. I know most days you eat alone,
at a bar downtown, watching whatever’s on.

ABOUT THE POET

Nick Martino grew up alongside the ocean of Lake Michigan. As an MFA 

candidate in poetry at UC Irvine, his work has been published in Volume 

Poetry, quiet lightning, and Foothill Journal.

 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.