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.



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.
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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.



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.
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FLOWER CONROY—VELVET (Issue 25)

VELVET


Because I’ve doused my wrists in Exit the King & bring them

supplicationwise to my face loopingly as if I could closer.

Because sheepsy wolvesy Beethoven’s playing on Pandora.

Because I’m performing an exorcism on the closet & what

was within lays bare over bed & chaise stitched with dog

hair. Coleworts twice sodden. Cockleshells all in a row. Art

is very instinctive (declares Rosten-Edwards). In the ’90s I

wore you feline suited. Neon-wigged in cognito, didn’t I think

myself queenly pussyfooting into those guillotine nights?

Inspiration drawn from Peg Bundy & Hades. It’s not just

the dust bunnies among the skeletons I’m after. Damnit I

cried last night watching Queer Eye. Because Stocking Lady

& damnit wacky fashion sense & damnit overdressed &

underclothed. Because in a fantasy I’m as reflective as an idea

eeling behind the eyes especially crushed—coruscated &

Zorcoian as March rain. Navigating dusk I turn on mid-

lights. Soft get-you-bys. I was intent you’d be skirt split to

saddlebag, tube-top over-floweth. A text or two later—your

Shane’s second piss catheter. Him constipated from Chemo

meds. You can’t go back & it’s a blessing as much as a curse.

Scarf cloaking shoulder like the folded-upon-folded-upon-

selves cabbage (cut in-half) now are: labyrinthine. I am

adorned. I wear you. But you—you wear me out




ABOUT THE POET 


LGBTQ+ artist, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet 
Laureate, Flower Conroy’s books include Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder, 
A Sentimental Hairpin, and Greenest Grass (or You Can’t Keep Killing 
Yourself & Not Expect to Die). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in 
American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, The Yale Review, 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.
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JUDITH FOX—ALZHEIMER'S DIDN'T (Issue 25)

ALZHEIMER'S DIDN'T

trumpet itself.
I didn’t detect
its high frequency sounds,
didn’t spot
its webbed wings, sharp teeth.

It descended,
a soft-pawed cloud.
Settled
in your lap. Circled its tail
around the two of us.
Took time.



ABOUT THE POET 


Judith Fox wrote nonfiction articles for national magazines, but didn’t
start studying and writing poetry seriously until the spare text she wrote for her
award-winning photography book, I Still Do: Loving and Living with 
Alzheimer’s, rekindled a life-long love of poetry. She is a finalist for BLR’s 
spring 2022 poetry prize and her poems appear in a number of journals and 
reviews. Fox is also a fine art photographer; her photographs have been 
exhibited globally and are in museum collections including LACMA, VMFA, 
MOPA, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Fox 
is twice-widowed, lives in Los Angeles, and is working on a chapbook currently 
titled: “Between Verse and Chorus.” JudithFox.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.
Posted by at No comments:
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