ERICA DAWSON—"SONNET AFTER AUTOCORRECT TURNS WHY DO YOU LIVE SO FAR AWAY TO WHY DO YOU LOVE SO FAR AWAY" (Issue 29)

Sugar House Review · Erica Dawson's, "Sonnet after autocorrect turns why do you live so far away to why do you love so far away"

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.

MICHAEL CHANG—"执迷不悔 UNREPENTANT" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Michael Chang's, "执迷不悔 Unrepentant"

UNREPENTANT 

What can I do but shine / in memory 

—John Wieners 

● 

racing down a beach may reap uncommon rewards 

a simple gift, one a ghost could give 

when all’s said & done, what have we got left 

ghost nuts, a whole wad 

[something to share] 

ur breath on my chest 

AG standing for “aspiring governor” 

u will surely hate growing old 

the constant yelping in the yard 

followed by extended periods of pain 

my mood depending upon the fireworks 

i derive no pleasure from fantasies 

indecent lips, carnal skin 

unwholesome, vulgar 

buggers to be awoken 

ppl who disappear into side streets w/o warning 

& never look back 

on a day like today 

remind me how the sunroom filled w/ ferns 

over our protestations 

the trip to echo park being unnecessary 

it was the first good party of the season [some say the only] 

baubles & balls 

snow that keeps melting 

after u shake it off 

three bees on a shield 

shiny headgear lifted from a learned man 

reciting the dimensions of a dream

ABOUT THE POET 

Michael Chang (they/them) is the author of Almanac of Useless Talents 

(CLASH Books, 2022) and Synthetic Jungle (Northwestern University Press, 

2023). Tapped to edit Lambda Literary's Emerge anthology, their poems have 

been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. 

They were awarded the Poetry Project's Brannan Prize & edit poetry at Fence.

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.

J.P. DANCING BEAR—"TRAP TEOP TRAP FLOW" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · J. P. Dancing Bear's, "Trap Teop Trap Flow"

TRAP TEOP TRAP FLOW

for Ruth Awad 

Today on your birthday, 

I told several people seeking advice 

to read your work. Not because, 

but because I didn't know, at the time, 

it being your anniversary howl. 

My people dreamed of stately swans 

floating across dreamcatcher 

ponds who were themselves ancient people. 

When I was a child, a bear came to me, 

and in my sleep it nudged me awake, 

and breathed into my mouth. Now I confess 

my words, my words, my tongue are hers. 

She still comes in between worlds, comes 

and looks down at me, much as you do, 

in that photo, the one where behind 

you, on swan-white paper, float the words, 

traP 

teoP 

traP 

floW 

Yes. It is the look of one who knows 

this world is a forest trail, cutting, 

winding its way down to water, down 

to a face made of tears.

ABOUT THE POET 

J.P. Dancing Bear is editor of Verse Daily. He is the author of sixteen 

collections of poetry, most recently, Of Oracles and Monsters (Glass Lyre 

Press, 2020), and Fish Singing Foxes (Salmon Poetry, 2019). His work has 

appeared in hundreds of venues.

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.

SETH HAGEN—"ONE OF US" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Seth Hagen's, "One of Us"

ONE OF US

One of us is drunk, and one of us is lying–

if love is a temple, it’s got spiders and a curse. 

Maybe we won’t work it out, but we’re trying. 

Us still swims luminous in my mind, 

an embryo in its egg, candled and obscure— 

O.K., one of us is drunk, and one of us is lying. 

You said, “Hold that thought. I’m buying,” 

pleated a twenty you plucked from your purse. 

Were we working it out? Were we even trying? 

You swung on the surface in the glass of wine. 

“I remember our first bed. Now there are no more firsts.” 

Someone must be drunk. Someone must be lying. 

You asked me if love was just crust, salt rime 

on rock when the lies burned off from lust– 

so maybe we won’t work it out, but I’m trying. 

Let us kneel to its Form in faith or in science: the

voice of a virgin, black holes, a fifth force 

What if one of us is drunk and one of us lying? 

Maybe we won’t work it out, but love is trying.

ABOUT THE POET 

Seth Hagen has works forthcoming in DIAGRAM. He has published in the fields 

of literary study and tax law. He lives in Atlanta, GA, where he teaches English.

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.

BETSY MITCHELL MARTINEZ—"BUILDING L: LOS DANANTES" (Issue 28)

Sugar House Review · Betsy Mitchell Martinez's, "Building L: Los Danzantes"

BUILDING L: LOS DANANTES

I’m tired of speaking the language 

of my dreams, with its childhood rhymes 

and tidepools, its bulbs exploding 

on schedule into clusters of grape 

hyacinths. Let’s order brides on the internet 

and shape our mouths into fruits 

or kitchen utensils. Isn’t the weather 

fine today? Would you like some sugar 

in your coffee? When we visited 

the ancient Zapotec city, we crouched 

in the temple of los danzantes and studied 

the curves of naked men presumed 

by early anthropologists to be bent 

in dance. We now believe them to be 

corpses, genitals replaced with 

flowery scrolls. This is what I mean 

when I talk about dancing. 

ABOUT THE POET 

Betsy Michtell Martinez received an MFA from the University of 

Michigan. Her poems have appeared in The Northwest Review and Crab 

Orchard Review.

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.

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.