SEAN HILL—"POSTCARD FROM COMPASS ROSE" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Sean Hill's "Postcard From Compass Rose"

POSTCARD FROM COMPASS ROSE 

I’ve been traveling lately 

without you. Remember that 

time you said I was the flower 

drawn in the corners of maps 

by careful cartographers to give 

you guidance? A lodestar leading 

you so you may not be alone— 

may find your way back home. 

I got word you miss me, but it 

doesn’t show in your ways. Now 

you leave home with just your 

smartphone and trust in GPS— 

a guiding hand, a trying-to-be-

charming voice—and you’re made 

to feel comfortably lost never 

knowing where you are except 

on the way, as far as I can tell. 

Is that like falling in love? You 

know, my face was first traced 

by the winds I kissed the mouths 

of, as have many men—explorers 

and those who came after— 

looking to see the world. Best 

of luck along your way 

to where you want to be.

ABOUT THE POET 

Sean Hill is the author of two poetry collections, Dangerous Goods (Milkweed 

Editions, 2014), awarded the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, and Blood Ties & 

Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008), named one of the Ten Books All Georgians 

Should Read in 2015 by the Georgia Center for the Book. Hill has received 

numerous awards, including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the 

Bush Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Hill’s poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, New England 

Review, Orion, Oxford American, Poetry, Tin House, and numerous other journals, 

and in over two dozen anthologies including Black Nature, Villanelles, and Cascadia 

Field Guide. A volume of poems selected from Blood Ties & Brown Liquor and 

Dangerous Goods has been translated and published in Korean. Hill lives in 

southwestern Montana with his family and is a professor of creative writing at the 

University of Montana. 

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.

TROY OSAKI—"REVERSE LIGHTNING RALLY AT THE U.S. EMBASSY" (Issue 27)

Sugar House Review · Troy Osaki's "Reverse"

REVERSE LIGHTNING RALLY AT THE U.S. EMBASSY

after Matt Rasmussen 

The president’s face on fire becomes a face 

again, unburnt. Smoke rolling skyward 

now caves in. Kara unclicks her lighter 

& every flame is inhaled into it. We lower 

the effigy. Take it apart. Guards uncircle us 

running backward into the gates. Their escrima 

sticks falling to their sides. We crumple protest 

signs & tuck them under our T-shirts. We cross 

the highway. Our backs charging into traffic. 

Our lifted fists sinking. In the air, our chant 

flings back at us. Imperialismo! Ibagsak! 

Manila Bay spits out sunlight, flattens. 

In the news, the Pentagon. Plans to airstrike 

Mindanao leap into an official’s mouth.

ABOUT THE POET 

The grandson of Filipino immigrants and the great-grandson of Japanese 

immigrants, Troy Osaki is a poet, organizer, and attorney. Osaki is a three-

time grand slam poetry champion and has earned fellowships from 

Kundiman, Hugo House, and Jack Straw Cultural Center. He was awarded 

a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the 

Poetry Foundation in 2022. A 2022–2023 critic-at-large for Poetry 

Northwest, his poetry has appeared in Crazyhorse, The Margins, Muzzle 

Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He holds a Juris 

Doctor degree from the Seattle University School of Law where he interned 

at Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration for youth in 

King County. He lives in Seattle, WA.

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.

SONJA VITOW—"(WHEN NO ONE)" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Sonja Vitow's "(When No One)"

(When No One)

a soft thing often 

hopes to be touched 

(the temptation to take a soft 

thing in your palm 

& when no one is looking, 

check to see that it’s really 

so soft) 

to tender something 

delicate (when no one is looking) 

what great responsibility 

(the temptation to take a soft 

thing in your palm 

& spend a finger over it, 

thinking just: how soft, how 

fragile) the temptation 

to take the soft thing between 

a finger and thumb 

and apply some pressure 

(just some) 

& when it breaks, pretend 

it was never soft 

(the temptation to then say) 

I didn’t know my own strength

ABOUT THE POET 

Sonja Vitow (she/they) is a queer Jewish teacher living in the Jamaica Plain 

neighborhood of Boston, where they are the editor of a small literary magazine 

called The Knicknackery and in charge of the soap enterprise I'd Lather Not. They 

received their MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in 2013, and are 

currently pursuing their PhD in human sexuality from Widener University. Some 

of their work can be found in Rattle, Harvard Review, Fugue Journal, The Rumpus, 

and Carve Magazine, or at SonjaVitow.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.

SKYE JACKSON—"SADE & STEVIE SONNET SEQUENCE" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Skye Jackson's "sade & stevie sonnet sequence"

SADE & STEVIE SONNET SEQUENCE

i listen to sade with men i love 

foolish & wild, i whisper forever 

glistening like diamonds, so wet, in their beds: 

my spent heart, cold, shakes the four posts again 

don’t mock me as i melt into my gin 

it starts with record players and hot nights 

i find the wrong ones & fail to do right. 

the wine hugs as you call me a good girl. 

desire gussies my throat like ruined pearls. 

there are depths to the sorrow her voice holds: 

sometimes i think you’re just too good for me 

i beg for a cage but you set me free 

i know i’m about to have a breakup— 

stevie’s voice through the cvs speakers 

the cvs dims as stevie’s voice spins: 

when you build your house / then please call me home 

i buy plan b & pads i hope to need. 

the dark blood comes as i drive into work. 

the psychic will call it a miscarriage. 

my soul will call it an answered prayer. 

i look for a man who was never there. 

i call in sick as my bent body roars. 

there are certain debts only women pay. 

who did i destroy? myself, you or us? 

years later, i don’t remember his name: 

the man who stood outside as i shed you. 

sade’s voice purrs through my studio walls: 

will you keep bringing out the best in me?

ABOUT THE POET 

Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. She served as a poetry 

editor for Bayou Magazine and several other publications. Her work appeared or 

is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Green Mountains Review, Rattle, and 

elsewhere. Her debut chapbook A Faster Grave won the 2019 Antenna Prize. She 

was a finalist for the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize, and in 2021, she won the AWP 

Intro Journals Award. Her work was recently selected by Billy Collins for 

inclusion in the Library of Congress educational programming. This past spring, 

she was crowned the winner of the legendary KGB Open Mic Contest in New 

York City. She currently serves as the 2022 Writer-In-Residence at the Key 

West Literary Seminar in Florida.

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.

RUTH AWAD—"MOTHER OF" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Ruth Awad's "Mother Of"

MOTHER OF

an ascending thoracic 

aortic aneurysm, right above 

the root. First found seven years 

ago. The size of a walnut. She could 

not work. We painted her red walls white. 

Easier to sell. Put her artwork in storage and moved 

her to a farmhouse on a hill. Then the symptoms abated. 

The aneurysm dormant as a winter bear. We thought we’d been 

spared. In summer it’s the size of a ruby plum. The way fruit 

can ripen. The doctors speak in a language unlike my 

mother. Sharp and sterile. A gloved finger draws 

a vertical line down the sternum to explain 

an open-chest approach. Her heart, 

her heart, the mother of my 

whole red world.

ABOUT THE POET 

Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet, 2021 NEA Poetry Fellow, and the author 

of Set to Music a Wildfire, winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 

2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Alongside Rachel Mennies, she is the 

co-editor of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2020 

and 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her work appears in 

Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Believer, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, 

The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

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.

MATT MASON—"ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Matt Mason's "On the Winter Solstice"

ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE IN SPRINGDALE, UTAH, 2021

    

When you ask at the candy store 

if they felt that, too, 

the bump that shook your whole hotel down the street, 

it starts an excited chat 

about what it might have been— 

earthquake, gas blast, rock drop, truck thump—and 

he mentions supersonic jets from the A.F. base, but 

that’s further east, he says, 

that’s more around Flying Monkey Mesa, 

he says. 

                                And 

                                you, 

                            remarkably, 

                            you now live 

                                         on a planet 

                           where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                                exists. 

It’s named after animatronic dummies used to test ejector seats and, 

yes, there originally were 

monkeys, and, he says, one—only one—bear, 

but this is not about your species 

and its sometimes too-evident harm, this 

is about the wonder of your kind: 

in conjuring names that can make minds soar, 

in finding that thing you term humanity 

which pushes you to choose to use monkey robots 

instead of stirring more terror in actual monkeys 

(and bears) with the hard-to-dream technology 

    of a machine that flies, 

        of supersonic speeds, 

            of ejector seats and parachutes, 

                of this world 

                        where Flying Monkey Mesa 

                                            is just down the highway.

ABOUT THE POET 

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and former executive director of the 

Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009–2022. Through the US State Department, 

he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the 

recipient of a Pushcart Prize and his work can be found in The New York Times, 

on NPR’s Morning Edition, and in American Life in Poetry. Mason's fourth book, 

At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was 

released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, 

the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.

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.

JUSTIN EVANS—"AFTER READING THE POEMS OF TADA CHIMAKO" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Justin Evans' "After Reading the Poems of Tada Chimako"

AFTER READING THE POEMS OF TADA CHIMAKO

Pine trees announce their death shedding 

all their needles— spending their reserves 

like a child’s allowance 

New forest growth requires decades of patience 

waiting for rot to break away from the canopy, 

letting sunlight rest on the ground 

and sometimes it takes fire 

In my dreams I forget my own name while 

running a maze in the darkened dirty streets of Paris 

until I wake in a stranger’s bed 

These things are the same 

nothing dividing one from the other 

all answering to the same name

ABOUT THE POET 

Justin Evans was born and raised in Utah. He served in the Army and returned to 

Utah for his education. For the past two decades, he has lived in rural Nevada with 

his wife and sons where he teaches at the local high school. He is the author of ten 

books of poetry. Most recently are Cross Country (Wordtech, 2019), written with 

the poet Jeff Newberry, and All The Brilliant Ideas I've Ever Had (Kelsay Books, 

2020). In early 2022, Justin was awarded an artist fellowship from The Nevada 

Arts Council.

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.

SEAN CHO A.—A CUBE WHO IS GROWING. AND GROWING UNSURE OF HIMSELF. #8" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Sean Cho A's "A Cube Who Is Growing. And Growing Unsure of Himself. #8"

A CUBE WHO IS GROWING. AND GROWING UNSURE OF HIMSELF. #8

mid april: thirty five degrees. in the absence of clouds:

the sun is showing even it has limits. two young lovers

hold bare hands beside the lake: ignoring the logic of 

pockets. we've already shown our appreciation for pockets. 

holding everything we hold so dear that we must bring it 

along. didn't know what to give them for a gift: yesterday's 

dinner mints stink-y-ing in the heat: a case study the limitations

of objections/the space between object and the representative thank 

you. it's a thankless job. not unlike the jobs of all the other 

object-things. the screams of the june grass/the farm cat 

who wished to never go inside. on the day that a mouth emerges

from the vased-daylily we will have a new language to learn. 

i imagine i'm sorry & thank you will get all tangled up on our tongues. 

ABOUT THE POET 

Sean Cho A. is the author of American Home (Autumn House 2021) winner of 

the Autumn House Press chapbook contest. His work can be future found or 

ignored in Copper Nickel, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Nashville 

Review, among others. Sean is a graduate of the MFA program at The University 

of California Irvine and a PhD Student at the University of Cincinnati. He is the 

editor in chief of The Account. 

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.

LYNNE ELLIS—"BLOOD DRAW" (Issue 26)

Sugar House Review · Lynne Ellis' "Blood Draw"

BLOOD DRAW

My phlebotomist's earrings are upcycled IUDs. I want this kind of joy

    for all the gear we use to manage our bodies. 

Fifth grade, after school, I felt warm wet, and so undressed.

    I found a mud slick on my Wednesdays. 

I found my name scratched in red pen on the school's Kotex machine. 

    I found a kettle drum behind my sternum. 

I'm taking that shame out of my body and checking it into a Quality Inn

    with a Welcome Conference Attendees marquee. 

Shame will stay cuffed to the bed until it learns how to be good. 

    I'm taking the shame out of my body

and tossing it in a lockbox with countless other useless objects:

    ballet slippers, tiaras, bathroom scales. Mirrors too. Clothes one size too small.

All my self-doubt. 

    All the things that no longer fit. Out with the force of my heartbeat.

ABOUT THE POET 

Lynne Ellis (she/they) writes in pen. Her words appear or are forthcoming in 

Poetry Northwest, The Missouri Review, The Shore, Pontoon Poetry, and 

elsewhere. She was awarded the 2021 Perkoff Prize in Poetry and the 2018 Red 

Wheelbarrow poetry prize. Lynne's chapbook, In these failing times I can forget, 

confronts the human cost of rapid growth in a prosperous American city. Ellis is 

co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary 

creators.

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.

SHARI ZOLLINGER—A CINQUAIN ZODIAC (Issue 26)

A CINQUAIN ZODIAC - SUGAR ASTROLOGY 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Aries"

ARIES

March 21 to April 19 

If you 

require a season all to yourself, 

might I suggest you opt for spring? 

Begin. 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Taurus"

TAURUS

April 20 to May 20 

Don’t go, 

until we’ve sown 

our final seed. Our knees 

together upon this marl of 

kindness.

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Gemini"

GEMINI

May 21 to June 21 

And, like 

school friends we locked 

arms and we twirled and twirled, 

until the world we imagined 

surfaced.

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Cancer"

CANCER

June 22 to July 22 

Just once, 

I will whisper, 

and you will feel me as 

a devotion of wind on skin. 

Again?

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Leo"

LEO 

July 23 to August 22 

You’ll tell 

us what you’ll need, 

and we will begin our 

search right away. Stars upon the 

footpath.

 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Virgo"

VIRGO 

August 23 to September 23 

What else 

have you been up 

to since I saw you last? 

I heard you found a small house and 

two cats.

 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Libra"

LIBRA

September 23 to October 22 

Picture, 

the time we left 

our shoes in the sand, when 

water and light resoled 

the night.

 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Scorpio"

SCORPIO

October 23 to November 21 

Bravely, 

I’ll lead you through 

layers of sediment, 

the geology that is my 

body. 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Sagittarius"

SAGITTARIUS

November 22 to December 21 

Two wings 

hinged at the 

base of your boots. Where 

will you go this time traveler? 

And when?

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Capricorn"

CAPRICORN 

December 22 to January 19 

They will 

call you a root- 

system, un-solar, come 

in from blue-black germination. 

Soil stars.

 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Aquarius"

AQUARIUS 

January 20 to February 18 

Darts and 

a bullseye, we 

play together until, 

surprisingly we hit the mark 

at once.

 

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Pisces"

PISCES 

February 19 to March 20 

Breeching, 

you’ll burst from the 

water unaware of 

anything but the urgent search 

for air. 

ABOUT THE POET 

A native of Utah, Shari Zollinger divides her time between her work as a 

professional astrologer and independent bookseller. She has been known to write 

a poetic verse or two with published work in Sugar House Review and Redactions. 

She recently published Carrying Her Stone, a collection of poems based on the 

work of Auguste Rodin.

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.