JOHN A. NIEVES—"NOTE FROM APPARENT MAGNITUDE TO LUMINOSITY" (Issue 25)

Sugar House Review · John A. Nieves' "Note from Apparent Magnitude to Luminosity"

NOTE FROM APPARENT MAGNITUDE TO LUMINOSITY

Take a second to disregard the yawning pupils 

of the telescope-tethered. I know you’ve been busy 

with energy, energy, energy—how much something 

puts out, how to measure it. I want for a second to ask: 

what does all that output matter if everyone else is 

too far away to sample the shine? Look, I remember 

that summer I woke up one day and you had 

inexplicably dimmed 70.25%. It wasn’t just 

observable as less shedding of charged particles, 

I could see myself through you in the mirror. When I called 

for breakfast, you walked through the couch. The closer you 

got to me, the clearer you became—I could again see the lines 

of your face as ghost currents, as the worry of week-late 

rent. But as you backed away, you were just the AC wisping 

the sediment of the room, asking the shadows if shadow 

were a function of brightness or the gulf between light 

and what eats it. After a few days you brightened again. It 

probably had to do with a series of late-night phone calls 

or a letter you got you pressed close to your chest. Not this letter, 

not that time, like brightness couldn’t be relative, but I would have 

recognized my own handwriting. Anyway, with your normal 

gleam restored you drifted out the door, down the highway, 

not nearly as bright as the shadow you had just been, not nearly 

anything I could measure without interval, without the wide 

gap between observation and location, the intimate comparison 

of what one throws off and what another can catch.

ABOUT THE POET 

John A. Nieves is a hardcore Sugar House fan. He has poems forthcoming or 

recently published in journals such as: North American Review, Copper Nickel, 

32 Poems, Harvard Review, and Massachusetts Review. He won the Indiana 

Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual 

Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury 

University and an editor of The Shore Poetry. He received his MA from 

University of South Florida and his PhD from the University of Missouri.

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.

ACE BOGGESS—"GRATITUDE LIST #3" (Issue 25)

Sugar House Review · Ace Boggess' "Gratitude List #3"

GRATITUDE LIST #3

Forgive me when I praise my wealth 

of misadventure: 

how the knife pressed against me scarred my thumb 

& fingers, 

never took my throat; 

how the knife that pierced my lower back 

spared an artery by an inch of fat; 

how the knife I wielded like a child’s plastic sword 

found an arm & thigh but nothing 

to haunt me past this writing-down; 

how the knife I threw stuck only in a door; 

how the pistol cocked behind me somewhere in shadow 

never discharged 

while cash & goods were exchanged; 

how the larger knife held at my neck 

turned out to be a test 

by a desperate man who wanted my desperation; 

how the officer’s boot grinding my skull 

into a blood-soaked pharmacy floor 

raised up before a bone could fracture; 

how the fists of other prisoners found my face 

just enough to land a message; 

how I survived the way I lived; 

how knowing I survived 

somehow doesn’t make me a survivor; 

how the knife tonight cut meat— 

so dull, I thought, so simple & pleasingly dull.

ABOUT THE POET 

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road 

Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His 

writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, 

Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in 

Charleston, WV, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

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.