CYAN JAMES—"Q: ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT DIABETES" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Cyan James', "Q: Are You Concerned About Diabetes"

Q: ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT DIABETES

A: Sugar is more bam per gram than gunpowder but that’s only a 

fact not a feeling 

Kinds of sugar: caster, granulated, pearl, cane, demerara, turbinado, 

muscovado. Sounds like bachata song titles. Juicy entanglement. Ever smelled 

a cane field on fire? Piccolo note of sweet among the whirling pillar of smoke, 

hawks up high to pierce all the mammals on fire rushing the field’s edges. 

It kills kills kills even though it purrs so loud it fills your mouth it’s still a tiger 

in your kitchen. Possible to imagine people as the personified causes of their 

deaths, such as corpses like a row of frosted cakes in frilly white wrappers 

We make it at seven ounces a day per person, 160 pounds per person per year, 

enough to bury us all. How often we say ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘let’s 

celebrate’ with the slow poison of custards, pecan pie, butter biscuits with tea 

Basterdsuiker: what the Dutch called adding molasses. Sugar so prestigious 

when pure, colonists gobbled it until they got black teeth. If they couldn’t buy 

it, they blackened their teeth to appear rich enough (to be giving themselves 

gum rot), and that’s just about everything you need to know about my people.

ABOUT THE POET 

Cyan James holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her work has been 

nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and published in Gettysburg Review, Michigan 

Quarterly Review, Arkansas Review, New Mexico Review, Harvard Review, and 

Salon, among others. She also holds a PhD in public-health genetics and works in 

health policy. Currently she is revising a novel about the young women who 

survived the Green River Killer. She loves fiddles, falconry, long road trips, and 

old front porches.

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.

ANN-MARIE BLANCHARD—"FIDELITY IS NOT DEAD" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Ann-Marie Blanchard's, "Fidelity Is Not Dead"

FIDELITY IS NOT DEAD

Fidelity’s baby is dead. She named him Bruce 

and he said goodbye, slipped into the toilet, 

stingray resplendent. It hurt. Fidelity scooped 

his jelly body out the bowl and buried him under 

the camelia, placed a brick over his head; a Virgin 

of Guadalupe candle too (even though she’s had it 

with the Virgin). Some women don’t bury their jelly 

babies. Some don’t give them names. Some don’t 

tell anyone they birthed a jelly baby on the weekend. 

Fidelity is not some women. Fidelity tries to trust 

her body again—invites it out for coffee, asks what 

it does for a living; doctors tell her body to try again. 

Fidelity tries to chart her surges, tries to make love 

even though love makes death. People say her dead 

baby is the shade of hope. When did they last birth 

a stingray? Don’t tell Fidelity about hope. Don’t tell 

her about fish oil. Don’t tell her about mystics. Don’t 

tell her to stick needles in her body at strategic points. 

Don’t tell Fidelity she’s thirty-eight, daily. Don’t tell 

her about prayer beads, holy water, wine fasts and 

running fast. Fidelity knows a thing or two about 

quackery. Fidelity prefers boa constrictors to babies, 

falcons to friends, lizards to lovers, horn sharks to hope.

ABOUT THE POET 

Ann-Marie Blanchard teaches poetry and philosophy at The University of Notre 

Dame on the west coast of Australia, having taught writing for a decade at 

universities in the US. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, A Public 

Space, Adroit Journal, Palette Poetry, Meanjin Quarterly, Westerly, Cordite 

Poetry Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won The Missouri Review 

Editors’ Prize in Fiction.

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.

LYNN KILPATRICK—"JACKSON POLLOCK PAINTS A SELF-PORTRAIT" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Lynn Kilpatrick's, "Jackson Pollock Paints a Self-portrait"

JACKSON POLLOCK PAINTS A SELF-PORTRAIT

If the brushstroke embodies representation, 

let this drop of paint be the thin membrane 

between being and seeing. Let the exact gray 

of my eyes become nothing more than gauze

through which I see the canvas, darkly. She 

said show me the exact yellow of light, 

and I said, I don’t paint that shit. I said 

every canvas is a self-portrait, every 

drop of paint is a whiff of the world

that can’t be unmade. I am painting 

the world in my image, one giant white 

mistake at a time. I said, stand back. 

I said, Look at this. 

ABOUT THE POET 

Lynn Kilpatrick's poems have appeared in Western Humanities Review, 

McSweeney’s, Tin House, and Denver Quarterly. Her collection of short 

stories In the House was published by FC2. Her fiction has appeared in 

Ploughshares, essays in Zone 3 and Brevity. She earned her PhD from the 

University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College.

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.

CHRISTY PRAHL—"STILL LIFE" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Christy Prahl's, "Still Life"

STILL LIFE 

There is a lemon.

There is a dachshund.

There is a broken board.

Consider the lemon,

yellow as the sun,

primal as the origin story of food.

Enter the dachshund,

squat and disproportionate circus

clown of dogs.

And now the broken board,

an accident in waiting.

What does that have to do with anything?

asks the new sweetheart,

a literalist, but strapping enough

to keep around for entertainment.

Have you never played the game

of lemon, dachshund, broken board?

Dachshund beats broken board.

Broken board beats lemon.

Lemon beats dachshund.

(The sour tongue, you ninny.)

It might surprise you to learn

that they all made me cry.

The dachshund for dying of bloat

after I let myself love her.

The lemon for a spray of citric acid in the eye

while brightening up the flounder.

The broken board for my sweetheart’s twisted ankle,

the fear that he would leave me.

But somehow, he stays.

He writes me a song called

A Lemon, A Dachshund, A Broken Board.

It is a song about none of these things.

It goes like this.

ABOUT THE POET 

Christy Prahl is the author of the collection We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press,

2023). A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her past and future publications include The Penn Review, Salt Hill Journal, Eastern Iowa Review, and

others. She has held residencies at both Ragdale and the Writers' Colony at Dairy

Hollow and is the founder of the PenRF reading series. She splits her time

between Chicago and rural Michigan and appreciates subways and siloes in equal

measure. More of her work can be found at

https://christyprahl.wixsite.com/christy-prahl.

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.

SHARI ZOLLINGER—"KILL YOUR DARLINGS: A ZODIAC*" (Issue 27)

Sugar House Review · Shari Zollinger's, "Kill Your Darlings, a Zodiac"

KILL YOUR DARLINGS: A ZODIAC* 

ARIES

March 21 to April 19 

What if you stay a minute longer, 

turn toward hieroglyphic heat; translate 

the slow theater of fuel, oxygen, gas? 

Quiet elongation of ember.

TAURUS

April 20 to May 20 

What if you stay too long? 

Clay sculpture readying for foundry, 

threshold of the very long pose. 

Might you enact a risky yawn? 

GEMINI

May 21 to June 21 

What if you say nothing, 

even when rumor gathers in your throat, 

or when the tornado under your tongue 

seeks ground? 

CANCER

June 22 to July 22 

What if you stop looking in the mirror? 

Nanao Sakaki says, "to stay young, to save the world, 

break the mirror.” 

Wetland-scattered water calls up a new image. 

The place where blue herons nest. 

LEO

July 23 to August 22 

What if you walk through the city, 

not as yourself? Invisible, cloaked—disguised. 

Moustached and platinum-mohawked, 

how will you survive the day? 

VIRGO

August 23 to September 23 

What if you let the dust settle? 

Skiff of very find powder accumulates 

in the gutters of rare books. 

Resist the temptation to scatter. 

LIBRA

September 24 to October 22 

What if you risk asymmetry? 

This will mean a new set of plans. 

Let the pond to ripple. 

Look for chaos. 

SCORPIO 

October 23 to November 21 

What if you let go of her hand? 

Kite-like, she’ll fly up, 

tiny bowties on string. Tether release. 

Emptiness palms a beginning. 

SAGITTARUIS 

November 22 to December 21 

What if you came down 

from your fire outlook, from smoke 

and elevation? It’s time to walk 

off the mountain.

CAPRICORN

December 22 to January 19 

What if you let Time, 

fall from a cliff face? How will you 

measure your minutes going 

forward? 

AQUARIUS

January 20 to February 18 

What if you consider 

coming in from the stars, just for a peek 

at what the humans are doing? 

This will be research. 

PISCES 

February 19 to March 20 

What if you lay a little longer, 

if only to consider the astonishing 

dream motif conjured night 

after night? 

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.

JUAN J. MORALES—"LOOKING FOR DUENDE" (Issue 27)

Sugar House Review · Juan J. Morales' "Looking for Duende"

LOOKING FOR DUENDE

My parents had a sprinkler 

that sputtered water whenever 

the tap was off, and mom surprised me 

when she casually said 

duende was watering the backyard again. 

I heard duende as Lorca’s captured inspiration 

in college. I asked how to translate it 

into English, and my parents couldn’t, 

settling on “the mischief of a goblin.” 

Mom added that it’s like 

the movie with small green Gremlins terrorizing 

the Pennsylvania town 

during Christmas. 

When I left home, 

sent out to find duende, 

the muse gifted deep wells of dream, 

podcasts about skinwalkers and tricksters 

orchestrating mischief, winds singing 

through deep woods 

to echo like ocean waves. 

I didn’t know I first encountered duende 

in the Looney Tunes cartoon 

where Bugs Bunny saves 

the B-52 bomber from the small saboteur 

and William Shatner's Twilight Zone plane ride, 

watching monster dismantle 

the engine before flying into the lightning 

and leaving him in lunacy. 

Duende coaxed me to pedal faster 

on my childhood's rickety bike, 

to follow shadows mistaken 

for witches, to welcome deja vu 

on mountain trails I’ve never hiked before. 

I still search beyond Lorca’s execution 

and mass grave 

whenever I study full moon's grief. 

I accept the medium’s summertime warning 

that my dead father has become duende, 

promising to meddle 

until we safely make it 

into the chilly months of 

November and December.

ABOUT THE POET 

Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. 
He is the author of three poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide 
to End Times, and his fourth collection, Dream of the Bird Tattoo, is forthcoming 
from University of New Mexico Press. Morales is a CantoMundo Fellow, a 
Macondo Fellow, the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press, and the associate dean 
of the College of Humanities Arts & Social Sciences at Colorado State University 
Pueblo.

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.

MIRANDE BISSELL—"AIR POEM " (Issue 27)

Sugar House Review · Mirande Bissell's, "Air Poem"

AIR POEM

Loft Mountain after a day of midges 

and sweat. I sleep long enough to start over. 

Night wind lifts the tent’s fabric like a tongue 

plays on a tongue, has waited for us 

to want something more than rest. 

The air has the calcium sweetness 

of well-water. It’s bone-building air. 

I have a collarbone to cool, blushed-apple 

shoulders to round. All these years, we 

should have comforted each other. 

ABOUT THE POET 

Mirande Bissell is a teacher in Baltimore, MD. Her first book of poems 

Stalin at the Opera was selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2020 

Ghost Peach Press prize.

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.