The Sound of Sugar: FLOWER CONROY

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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