Sonnet after autocorrect turns why do you live so far away? to why do you love so far away?
i love at close range. you leave room for myth,
ancient rock formations, riddles, the changing width
of oceans at high tide. i cannot touch,
in my memory, your taste or feel you such
as one feels their own shadow’s crouch. [distance,
you have failed me.] i haven’t seen you since
you left my bed. my heart has not yet grown
fonder or hardened into fist-sized stone.
it’s still an instrument of life, a beat
and then a beat. in the atria grooves
you must acquire how to love me. ride
your vanishing. i’m the fixed one who moves
in place. picture my face on our night street
rinsed clean at dawn. then love. love then abide.
ABOUT THE POET
Erica Dawson is a neurodivergent African-American poet living in the
Baltimore-DC area. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently,
When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018). Her poems have appeared
in Best American Poetry, Orion, The Believer, VQR, and other journals and
anthologies. She loves her dog Stella, Wu-Tang Clan, and anything cooked with
cardamom.
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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