Sunday, December 10, 2023

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

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. 



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Saturday, December 9, 2023

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

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.



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from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 
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Sunday, October 22, 2023

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

(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.



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from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 
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Sunday, October 8, 2023

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

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.



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from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 
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Sunday, September 17, 2023

RUTH AWAD—"MOTHER OF" (Issue 26)

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.



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from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to 
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Sunday, September 3, 2023

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

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.



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Sunday, August 20, 2023

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

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 
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Sunday, August 6, 2023

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

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



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Sunday, July 23, 2023

LYNNE ELLIS—"BLOOD DRAW" (Issue 26)

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.



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Sunday, July 9, 2023

SHARI ZOLLINGER—A CINQUAIN ZODIAC (Issue 26)

A CINQUAIN ZODIAC - SUGAR ASTROLOGY 

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.



GEMINI
May 21 to June 21 

And, like 
school friends we locked 
arms and we twirled and twirled, 
until the world we imagined 
surfaced.



CANCER
June 22 to July 22 

Just once, 
I will whisper, 
and you will feel me as 
a devotion of wind on skin. 
Again?



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.

 

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.

 

LIBRA
September 23 to October 22 

Picture, 
the time we left 
our shoes in the sand, when 
water and light resoled 
the night.

 

SCORPIO
October 23 to November 21 

Bravely, 
I’ll lead you through 
layers of sediment, 
the geology that is my 
body. 



SAGITTARIUS
November 22 to December 21 

Two wings 
hinged at the 
base of your boots. Where 
will you go this time traveler? 
And when?



CAPRICORN 
December 22 to January 19 

They will 
call you a root- 
system, un-solar, come 
in from blue-black germination. 
Soil stars.

 

AQUARIUS 
January 20 to February 18 

Darts and 
a bullseye, we 
play together until, 
surprisingly we hit the mark 
at once.

 

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.



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We loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), and we want an 
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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 
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