ELI KARREN—"PORTRAIT OF A SMALL TOWN AT GOLDEN HOUR" (Issue 22)

Sugar House Review · Portrait of a Small Town at Golden Hour

 PORTRAIT OF A SMALL TOWN AT GOLDEN HOUR

Surely this is the light you wanted. Everything turned
to amber in the afternoon. The windows peering out
over honeycombs, tessellated mountain ranges.
This, the only memory I have—
a twilight wash, haloed by nettles and pricker bushes.
The moon like a canker sore on the tree line.
Or maybe, I am remembering a dirt road at dusk,
a head angled out the car window, out past
Guernsey cows and paint-peeled steeples, out towards
the mechanized hum of campfire songs. Or was it
on a secret beach somewhere? Pruned hands
cupping the sunset, splashing it around, panning for what
lay at the bottom. What lay at the bottom of all this.
That has to be it. Us tap dancing on zebra mussels,
all tangled up in tape hiss, burnt away
in a lens flare we fed for far too long.

 

ABOUT THE POET 

Eli Karren is a poet and teacher residing in Austin, TX. His works have appeared in the Harvard Review, Cimarron Review, and the anthology Turn It Up: Poetry in Music from Jazz to Hip Hop.

 

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.

ROBERT LYNN—"I WANTED TO BE A NEW YORK LOVE POEM" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · Robert Lynn's "I Wanted to Be a New York Love Poem"

I WANTED TO BE A NEW YORK LOVE POEM

To the woman getting off the train who offered to throw
away my browning banana peel. To these men posing

for photos with their cat on the beach. To Nancy screaming
at Coney’s seagulls: Today I am twenty-four and you don’t care.

To the seagulls who don’t care staring religious into January
winds. To the strangers and strangers and strangers still

catching Jillian as she passes out on the 77th Street station stairs.
Or again on the Brooklyn Bridge. Again in that forever hallway

connecting the 7 to the G in Queens. To the woman having trouble
modulating her voice on the Staten Island Ferry when she sees

the backlit statue: This is my America, Randall. I’m not going
back to Atlanta. Even to the person whispering I’m sorry

I’m sorry I’m sorry so softly to the rest of us as he jerks himself
off in the corner of this subway car. To the grace of his embarrassed

turning away. To everyone. I wanted to be a love poem to everyone
but I couldn’t. There was all this hardness. There were cops breaking

broomsticks in Abner Louima. They wanted us to forget. Hoped
we’d move away. Forget if Eric Garner sold loose cigarettes

or played center for the Nets. I spent the morning visiting a friend
in Rikers Island. Visited mostly its indifferent way of turning a day

into early evening with nothing to show for it but the waiting.
They broke his leg before they put him here. They already forgot.

They thought we’d be happy being love poems. We still might be
if we hold space for the way this love sharpens like a bottle

in a bar fight. I hold it firmly but gently like a cat on a beach.
The way you would a stranger falling back into you on the stairs.

None of us are going back, Randall. You hear me. None of us.

 

ABOUT THE POET 

Robert Lynn is writer and attorney from Fauquier County, VA. He is currently an MFA student in poetry at New York University. His poems have been featured or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Antioch Review, Blackbird, New Ohio Review, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

LAURA GROTHAUS—"LINGUISTICS" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · Laura Grothaus's "Linguistics"

LINGUISTICS

after Still life by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps

Even now, I try to be generous with language
like bats with blood, who turn out their stomachs’
larders for hungry drifters. I tender my bluntness

and barber my temper. My hands dance
open with speech. Tell me again how
wings and tongues make consequences out of air.

ABOUT THE POET 

Laura Grothaus is a Baltimore-based poet and visual artist. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and garnered awards internationally, from Poetry in Pubs in Bath, England to the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition in Cary, NC. Galleries in New York and San Diego have shown her drawings, and she’s partnered with musicians, activists, and visual artists on workshops and performance projects in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Baltimore. When she was five years old, she lit her hair on fire with her own birthday candles.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

SHEILA BLACK—"BLUE DRESS WITH STRIPES" (Issue 20)

Sugar House Review · Sheila Black's "Blue Dress with Stripes"

BLUE DRESS WITH STRIPES

1.

A can of Diet Coke to cure a vicious hangover.
Or Star—her face in my mind,

superimposed over her later face,

the same face but how time moves across it.

The boy I loved that year who told me “You would be pretty
if only you didn’t move so much.”

A dress with blue stripes that didn’t suit.

A blue dress with stripes that made me look fat.

A blue dress with stripes that made me look small.

A blue dress with stripes that made me look as though I came from New Jersey.

A blue dress with stripes that gave me big hair

2.

1985 and our bodies terrified us—

Star and I, Michele and I, Lisa and I,

drinking egg creams and riding the subway to our dull jobs,

drinking vodka-and-tonics and roaming the night-streets in high heels
that cracked against jagged curbs or black oil on our bare feet.

3.

1985 and the accessories escape me:

Leopard vinyl strapped purses, flat plastic earrings in bold primary colors—mustard yellow,

fire-engine red, the royal blue of bleach. Black tubing braceleted around

our wrists, a tattoo of a purple flower.

A blue dress with stripes.

The F train to Coney Island where
we roamed the ruined Tunnel of Love, scrambling under police tape to pick our
way through red-cap, blue-cap crack bottles, and the surprise of the oily ocean.

4.

A blue dress that didn’t suit.

Our bodies that terrified us.

We covered them with glossy primary colors.

We used Eternity and Dove Extra Dry. We used Secret and
Patchouli. We used Vanilla Oil and Clorox. We used
Noxema and cider vinegar.

I left the boy who didn’t
want me to move. Michele got married. Lisa disappeared to
Los Angeles.

Star fell in love and moved in with
Stephen who did cocaine, Chris, who beat her when it was
himself he hated. Drugs, bad guys, more drugs. What she called

“having an oil burner habit.” Her roommate
Laura, who died in a tunnel under a bridge out in Marcy Avenue
in Brooklyn. Strangled. Put in plastic.

5.

A blue dress

with stripes 

A blue dress with stripes

A blue ___ with ___.

6.

1985: Our bodies terrified us, but we had it the wrong way around:

Our bodies which placed us in simple danger
simply by being the bodies they were.

A dress with blue stripes.

The kind of dress that has shoulder pads,
and ruffles around the hips

The kind of dress that is made of some kind of woven plastic.

The kind of dress that would not disintegrate even in a landfill.

7.

Laura’s history
is not in any history books. She was missing for ten years and by
the time they found her, the guy who did it had been killed over
some other crime. My friend Star reported her missing to everyone
she could think of, but everyone in 1985 was not very interested.

8.

“He picked on girls who did drugs.”

“He killed three women and put them in a locked room inside the tunnel.”

“He had the key because he had worked for the MTA.”

“His job was maintenance & other things.”

9.

A blue dress
A blue
A dress

Stripes on the pavement. Stripes on a dress.

A blue dress with stripes abandoned in a closet.

10.

Star in a picture yesterday. Her
cheeks slightly hollow from missing teeth. A bird battered
on a window. You can blame the bird or you can blame the window,
but the grief is in the arrangement of these elements—how can the
bird not wish to fly onward, how can the window not exist?

11.

Who was there to tell us we would grow in the violet shade,
sunlight striped with shadow, stubbled with blue, with a violence underneath,

the drug of the blue dress with stripes

the drug of ruffles & ruffles.

And love, the drug of the wrong-headed stories

we told each other in 1985 when our bodies terrified us.

 

ABOUT THE POET

Sheila Black is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Iron, Ardent (Educe Press, 2017). She is a co-editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Spectacle, The Nation, The New York Times, and other places. She currently divides her time between San Antonio, TX, and Washington, D.C., where she works at AWP.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

DUJIE TAHAT, "THIS IS THE LAST TIME" (Issue 18)

THIS IS THE LAST TIME

you’ll read this for the first time

& think this immigrant doesn’t flock
             like the rest of his sound,
                                                     but then again,
                                                     he’s cranking away
             at the Victrola & you’re about
to place your finger on the tip
             of your tongue
                                      shaped in the name of the song
                          which was only supposed to be
background music for this epithalamion,
             this dirge,
             this glow, this urge,
             this object permanence,
                          obscured by its chiaroscuro
             carrying on,
                                my wayward daughter
             one day will read this & it will mean something
                                                                                          new
                                                                   all over again.
                                                     I know
                              it’s a cheap trick—
             all this jostling & gesturing
into the wildness
             to see the line of a horizon
                                                        break yet again,
                                      but what can I say
that hasn’t been said or stolen
             into the night by an open car
                                                             window
humming on a highway already, sucking mouth
out of a sleeping child’s air
             like it wasn’t ever
                                           supposed to be there.

ABOUT THE POET

Dujie Tahat’s is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington state. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Narrative, Nashville Review, Shenandoah, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Dujie has earned fellowships from the Richard Hugo House and Jack Straw Writing Program. He serves as a poetry editor for Moss and Homology Lit and cohosts The Poet Salon podcast. He got his start as a Seattle Poetry Slam Finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and Seattle Youth Speaks Grand Slam Champion, representing Seattle at HBO’s Brave New Voices.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

LEE POTTS, "ASPECT" (Issue 18)

ASPECT

​

1.

Photos make us fools.
Not as light as a brittle brown leaf,
or a train ticket home,
but almost as likely
to lift up out of reckless fingers
into the wind, down the street.
We’ll lunge, chase, and occasionally catch up.

2.

My sled’s steel runners,
father’s coat collar,
the fender of his car,
     in this old photo’s narrow range of Polaroid greys
        nailing down forever where light once was
        and was not,

all increasingly and always
farther away.

ABOUT THE POET

Lee Potts is a poet living in Philadelphia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Painted Bride Quarterly, Gargoyle, Door is a Jar, Burningword Literary Journal, Saint Katherine Review, 8 Poems, andAmethyst Review. You can find more of his work at LeePotts.net.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

STEVEN CRAMER, "THE WORLD" (Issue 18)

THE WORLD

Balancing on his haunches, snapping at a stuffed frog I dangle above his jaws,
my Maltese’s front paws look puny as a kangaroo’s.   He can hold the position
for an astonishing 8 to 10 seconds.   If I were an honest parent, I’d explain to
him the futility of changing one’s nature—like trying to mate different species
of butterflies.   There he goes again, the little boxer . . . and here I go again,
remembering the June my rage overheated until it pounded music out of the
stereo with a mallet. Everyone I loved stopped their horseplay.   I saw two
futures—one a moonlit shoreline; one a diagnosis. There was a third future I
didn’t see.   Although I haven’t yet used the word “world,” when I do, I won’t
mean what that woman meant, index to her temple as she asked: how do you
bring the world into your thinking about art?   That whole summer my black
razor-point pens, when laid side by side, looked like bodies in body bags.

ABOUT THE POET

Steven Cramer is the author of five poetry collections, including Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande, 2004)—named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book—and Clangings (Sarabande, 2012). His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Field, The Kenyon Review, The New England Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Recipient of an NEA fellowship and two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, he founded and teaches in the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University. StevenCramer.com

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

DAYNA PATTERSON, "SELF-PORTRAIT AS MIRANDA WITH XENOPHILIA AND APOSTASY" (Issue 17)

SELF-PORTRAIT AS MIRANDA WITH XENOPHILIA AND APOSTASY

The world begins with yes.

—Terry Tempest Williams

After a short courtship, we wed,
all according to Father’s plan,
then left the island—and Father—behind.

No, that’s not how the story goes.
But it’s how this story goes.

We left him with his angel
-conveyed magic books, his staff
unbroken, his Urim and Thummim
to translate the ancient
urge. We left old

feuds, martyrs who traversed
the waters, who pioneered
their way here. Loathe to leave,
we left, Prospero’s promises broke
like stormclouds pouring
pitch and feathers. Peeling them off,
we left cells—strata of ourselves—behind.

We left, stealthing Ariel and Caliban along,
misfits who burned to serve
no god but their gut, Ariel at the helm steering toward expanse,
Caliban in the crow’s nest aiming at the unnameable.

Brave? The ship tilted full bore toward horizon, the ledge
of a new world.

ABOUT THE POET

Writer, editor, and logophile, Dayna Patterson makes her home in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her MFA from Western Washington University, where she served as the managing editor of Bellingham Review. She is the poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine and the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. Her literary obsessions include poetry and spirituality, and women in Shakespeare. DaynaPatterson.com

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

TAMARA L. PANICI, "ONCE YOU KNOW A THING EXISTS" (Issue 17)

ONCE YOU KNOW A THING EXISTS

Mama, what if I’m just another version 

of you? What if we’re all just fucked up

versions of the original beast? 

Because I want to be my own beast, I don’t know 

how to make mămăligă like you do. 

I don’t know how to not add butter and salt. 

Don’t you see? Half of me is Americancă

I’m a piece of corn between two tight teeth.

Here the wanderer only goes in circles

and hands are always dried out from 

scrubbing the world’s sinks, turned 

hard and tight like ribbons of old dead snakes.

Bring a gift no matter what and always

take your shoes off in the house, says Mama.

The clocks are all wrong again, says the sun 

to the moon, If you listen, I’ll tell you when.

You make mămăligă like this: boil water 

then add cornmeal. The sun says, Start now you 

simple beast. Can’t you see the world is hungry?

If you spend afternoons spinning your fingers

around the knob of an old radio, you might 

accidentally tune in to the voice of the 

original beast. You’ll wipe your hands clean

of your thoughts a thousand times, you’ll

rub all the aprons into threads trying 

to figure out why the voice sounds so familiar. 

ABOUT THE POET

Tamara L. Panici’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prelude, Likely Red, Carbon Culture Review, Riggwelter, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2018 River Styx Microfiction Contest and has been chosen to attend the Frost Place Conference on Poetry. You can find her on Twitter @tlpanici.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

ELIZABETH KNAPP, HUNTER'S MOON (Issue 17)

HUNTER'S MOON, GETTYSBURG

​

I could have believed anything
            that night, on that one-lane
                        country road, the battlefield
            alive with shadows, outlines
                        of worm fences where X

marks the spot, cupolas
            of blackened barns, & beyond,
                        the far slope of Cemetery Hill,
            where ghost troops huddled
                        under the broken moonlight,

& the wind made anguished
            sounds with its breath. Yes,
                        it was still possible for the world
            to surprise me, or rather, it was
                        still possible to surprise myself,

even there, waist-deep

            in the trenches, but crawling
                        my way out, up along the ravaged
            hillside, to where, from a distance,
                        the carnage looked gorgeous.

ABOUT THE POET

Elizabeth Knapp is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, and Quarterly West, among others. She teaches at Hood College in Frederick, MD.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

NATASHA KESSLER-RAINS, "FEARSCAPE" (Issue 16)

FEARSCAPE

If you were my sister, you would be dead.

Your beautiful arms outstretched,
can’t say shit with a hole in your head.

If you were my sister, would you cover up already?
Plum in one hand, vetches at your gender,
a wolf at your neck. Twenty minutes of action:
they said you were asking for it, my sister.

If you were my sister, you would sit in the corner.

Your beautiful face levitating over water—
no longer a body, just a hole in the ocean,
a hole in our human backs spilling out over the floor.

ABOUT THE POET

Natasha Kessler-Rains is the author of Dismantling the Rabbit Altar. Living in Omaha, she teaches writing at area universities and works as a writing consultant for Metro Community College. Natasha also helps facilitate a community workshop called the Seven Doctors Project, a Nebraska Writers Collective program. Natasha spends her free time tying knots and reading books to her daughter.

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.

JOHN A. NIEVES, "SPEEDING" (ISSUE 14)

SPEEDING

The music in the car muted the rain

on the road save the wiper blades’

                        repetitive thuds. No headlights, no

                        taillights, no deer or traffic signals.

Alone, out here, is part of the landscape.

The wind buffets me across

                        the asphalt’s long shine. The stereo

                        swears the world is as soft as lace, but

I don’t love anyone. Outside, the world

the world is as soft as lace. The ghosts

                        of train tracks clack under my tires. The milemarkers

                        streak green skyward into night.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Literary Review, Verse Daily and Passages North. His first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize and came out in early 2014. He’s an assistant professor of English at Salisbury University. John received his MA from USF and his PhD from the University of Missouri.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

LINDSAY ADKINS, "THE PACKAGE" (ISSUE 14)

THE PACKAGE

She is labeling every Last Time,
tucking each one away.
The doctor leaves the room for a

 place where he can be of some use
and she wonders about her liver,
what it looks like spotted

or even unspotted—
she’s never seen it before
and now it is killing her.

 They know what to do with
the body, but what are the rituals
for a half-eaten jar of peaches

at the back of the fridge? The comb
with her hair still in it? The coat
hanging limp by the side door?

Three weeks ago she ordered
a new green blouse. It’d be at the
house by now.

How simple—to open a box,
know what’s inside.

ABOUT THE POET

Lindsay Adkins’ work has been published with The 2River View, Muddy River Poetry Review, the Aurorean, Glass Mountain, among others. She is also a poetry editor over at Vine Leaves Literary Journal. During the day, she works in NYC at Random House Publishing Group. At night, Lindsay spends most of her time battling her penchant for noodles, and losing.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

ACE BOGGESS, "'DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU'VE DONE?'" (ISSUE 14)

“DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU'VE DONE?”

                                  —questionnaire

if regret is mourning
if regret is the lie
we tell ourselves when sleep won’t come
if regret takes blurry photographs
in black & white
posts them on Facebook
for many to ignore
if regret sings in the shower
a happy song to hide
the chiming undertones of operatic death
if it scrapes blood off highways &
erases the scar on my thumb
if it rolls the boulder up
if it laughs
at inappropriate moments
in the best of company
if someone says “regret!” &
means it without a definition
if a man dies clinging
to empty absent moments
from his youth
if regret is a pause upon waking
if regret is a pause before rest
if regret is life without mercy
spent daily wearing the lion’s skin

ABOUT THE POET

Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, WV. 

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

FAY DILLOF, "BLOSSOM" (ISSUE 14)

BLOSSOM

Either grief has no shape,
sneaks through the cracks

like a poisonous gas
or I was born

forgotten. Nurses fed me milk, scotch-
taped a ribbon to my head.

It probably wasn’t so bad.
Just a little bit

arbitrary. As arbitrary as this
February morning when,

driving home and not wanting
to get there, I passed a Magnolia exploding

so pink, I was brought to my knees
in unrehearsed worship. God,

how it hurt–– seeing it; how close
that was to being seen.

ABOUT THE POET

Fay Dillof has had poems selected for publication in Field, New Ohio Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and Shadowgraph.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

MAGGIE SMITH, "PANEL VAN" (ISSUE 14)

PANEL VAN

You know the one about the white panel van,
the one about the dark sedan, the one I told
my daughter this morning,

the one about the man who’s lost and needs
directions, the one about the man who lost
his puppy, the one that goes come here,

I’ll show you a picture of my puppy,
the one that goes he’s so cute, isn’t he,
such a cute little lost puppy.

I told my daughter the one about the not-lost
not-puppy. I redacted the part about what’s lost
being something in the man, something

he thinks a child can help him find, or maybe
he thinks she has it. She doesn’t have it.
I didn’t tell my daughter

the man was once a child. He had a mother
who zipped his tricky winter coat, tamed
his cowlick with her spit-wet thumb,

and how could she have known her son
would search the web for cute puppy
pictures, then roll past a park. This morning

I told my daughter the one about still loving
the world we live in, the world the man
lives in, lost. Yes, the same world.

ABOUT THE POET

Maggie Smith is the author of Weep Up (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018); The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison; and Lamp of the Body. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Maggie is a freelance writer and editor, and a consulting editor to the Kenyon Review. MaggieSmithPoet.com

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

The Sound of Sugar...Jen Lambert

FROM VISITATIONS

This country has no lamps for its alleys,
but I know the streets like the body
of a whore, those wounded stones, valleys
of dark water. There is sorrow
in wet nights, and the yields will not give.
I don’t know what is worse, to burn or to drown,
but either way there is famine. The dog will howl
in the limping city, the wasp will burrow
deep in the unforgiving plum, and tonight,
I will learn the bend of a girl, the give
and take, the way to turn her hard dirt
so I won’t starve on my own instinct,
so I won’t bite through my own foul tongue.
That flesh is ripe. It will bleed and run.

That flesh is ripe. It will bleed and run
if I’m not careful, but I am a patient man,
and your body is a map I can read
with my hands. Be a compass, a candle.
I am desperate for a course, and your body
is the way back. I miss a woman in my bed,
but I am too old for rules, for routes.
You, though, you can be my true North,
be a heave of iron, the sad, round
spinning Earth, and I will be the glass face,
the grid, the bearings. A man doesn’t need
directions, his heart is a magnet, it pulls,
his hands steady the steep pitch and roll.

My hands steady your steep pitch and roll,
but these hills are on fire and I
haven’t seen the sky in years. Direction?
I am your geography. I am your
book of maps. I am your sun. And you,
tiny planet, you insignificant
collection of stars, will spin and spin
until you burst into flame. Your black lakes
will boil, your fields sear, your safe little houses
of mothers will blaze, and I will rattle
your paper walls, my hot mouth at the door.
I will break the bones of this town. I will
burn down every tree, scald every girl I touch.
And you? You will blister. You will scorch.

You will blister, you will scorch, you
will burn you wicked little crow.
This is how it happens. This is how you die.
Don’t believe any of this. My hands are liars.
The way they touch you, the way
they fall on your body like moonlight, like rain.
Maybe it’s like this: maybe you drown.
Let’s say there is a black lake. Let’s say
there are hands, many hands, hands in your hair,
hands in your mouth, hands covering your mouth,
holding your mouth underwater. No, let’s say
the hands are stars, falling in the water
like hot stones. Open your mouth. Catch one.
This will keep you from drowning. This will save us both.

I tried to save you, to keep you from drowning.
How was I to know you were made of glass?
This whole city is a boneyard of broken girls,
slight wrists and stony kneecaps like landmines
under the sand. There is nothing left of you,
just threads of hair on a pillow, a damp dress,
be careful where you walk, girl. Every night
a new burning, every night I melt you down.
Tinder bound and boxed, you will love me.
My body can be the house you hide in,
and I will say, this is how you love,
and I will say, this is how you pray.
You were built for my kneeling, your mouth,
my own collection of trembling boughs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jen Lambert is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and burntdistrict magazine. She received an MFA from the University of Nebraska, and her work has appeared in journals such as Pank, The Los Angeles Review, Sugar House Review, and Redactions, among others. This recording is five sonnets from a longer series, Visitations.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

The Sound of Sugar....Liz Kay

SUNDAY EVENING

          The twins were found dead Sunday night
          in their father’s home after police got a call
          around 8pm requesting they check on them.

We found him lying
on the bed—
not asleep, but neither
quite awake—his eyes fixed
on the wall behind us,
and below him, tucked
beneath the bed
were the two small
bodies, bundled together
in a large towel and placed
face down.
How long had they lain
there? And him
above them, covering
them with his body,
the way a man might
throw himself on a grenade
and wait
in that long still moment
for the world to erupt.

ABOUT THE POET :

Liz Kay's poems have appeared in such journals as Willow Springs, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, RHINO, and Sugar House Review. Alongside co-editor, Jen Lambert, Liz is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal burntdistrict. Liz's debut novel, Monsters: A Love Story, is forthcoming from G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2016.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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. 

The Sound of Sugar....Laura Stott

INTO THE BLUE

At the edge of a boat dock
the blue nudes look far down a ladder—
 
to where it hits surface glass.
They can see rungs barely

waver as their blue heads peer
over. Their own eyes

and the stars reflect in dark tide.
It seems they will be climbing

down into sky, one
blue nude after another.

It couldn’t feel anymore night.
Seals swim in their black

milky way. Sky ripples
with the color glaciers create.

One moon bathed, barnacled
rung at a time, the blue nudes

disappear, past mussels
in their blue shells,

kelp tangled in mid-air.
One nude stops at the rim

before arranging herself
over the side—torso twists,

as hands cling. She looks back.
It is this leaving that’s beginning.

Her hair blows in the wind.


ABOUT THE POET:

Laura Stott received her MFA from Eastern Washington University and she teaches writing at Weber State University. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellingham Review, Sugar House Review, and are forthcoming in Crate.

ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.  

The Sound of Sugar....John A. Nieves

Backward Binoculars And Postage for Corpses

I’m all eyes and indigo

inking signatures in light and language,

riddles sewn into the bottom of busy tongues.

Strangers press their teeth together,

a clack in place of lips.

The underbelly of the morning

grinds against the back of the world—

long-distance casualties propped against broken shovels.

I lick the inside of their eyelids and seal them—

hope they get where they need to go.

About the Poet:

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and minnesota review. He won the 2011 Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio (2014), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. 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.