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.
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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