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.



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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