The Sound of Sugar....Shangrila Willy

HUNGER

came down from the hills
stealing in through a slight break
in the fence, a thoughtless day’s work
of forgetting. He slinks round the back way
looking for scraps I’ve left. Rough-furred
and bony under hand, I’d lost sight of him
in summer’s bustling seeds and furrows.
Now, as the days thin,
pared sliver by sliver at twilight’s
widening rim, I think of his warm burr
curled at my spine. I begin leaving him bowls
of empty and scraped plates of watching.
Soon, he is my sleek companion again,

his footsteps dogging mine.

About the Poet:

Shangrila Willy is a collector of words, shoes, fables, and other em­broidered things. She lives in Baltimore with her lugubrious Great Dane and her husband who mucks about in brains. She has most recently been pub­lished in Pear Noir!, Rattle, and Gargoyle; and has work forthcoming in Mea­sure, Magma, and cream city review.

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....Juan J. Morales

Boy Scouts vs. Zombies

In my elementary school

gymnasium, Scout Master tells us

to do our civic duty

with sticks we sharpened

and pockets knives we aren’t supposed

to know how to use yet.

There are no merit badges for this.

We are never prepared

for parents and teachers possessed

with the undead gait

that rips through school to eat children

and anyone in between.

If I survive, I will join

the future leaders of a hellish country,

rebuilt by the orphans who sob

for forgiveness to their hungry-for-flesh

families we execute

against our will.

I don’t want to wear

this uniform anymore. I don’t want

to think about being

loyal to my den or being

a good citizen by putting down

our bit up Scout Master.

I will not think about my absent mother

or my reanimated father

attacking towards me. I will

pretend I get a pin or patch for this. I will

act like it’s not him anymore

and other lies to keep myself alive.

About the Poet:

Juan J. Morales’ collection of poems, Friday and the Year That Followed, won the 2005 Rhea and Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and was pub­lished in 2006 by Bedbug Press. His poetry has also appeared in Acentos Re­view, Many Mountains Moving, PALABRA, Poet Lore, Washington Square, Zone 3, and other journals.

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....Erica Dawson

Everybody Down

Around this time of year, someone will fall

Over Great Falls. It could be me if I

Left Tampa’s flatness for Virginia’s drawl.

Altiloquent, high-flying cardinals’ cry

Whit chew. The Civil War has its own app,

e-iPhone forts; but, love rides war roughshod

Over Virginia for lovers and sap

Sugar maples. I could get right with God

Here, and descend from blue preoccupations

Catching humidity latching on white

Oak trees, and tangle with indoctrinations:

Survival of the fittest; fright or flight;

Heat rising. Metamorphic slab for miles

Above the water table, stipule spines

Float somewhere for a stagnant spot. Rock stiles

Tease ticks to Climb back up. The ripples’ brine

Is really schist’s sharp grains. How do you like

Me now, God? Accident of fractured bone,

One with nature, the solstice, and a hike.

I bloom in spring. In spring, I die as stone.

About the Poet:

Erica Dawson’s first collection of poems, Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser 2007), won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Her new collection, The Small Blades Hurt, is forthcoming from Measure Press. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, Harvard Review, and other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the undergraduate, and the low-residency MFA, program at University of Tampa.

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....Charlie Malone

Illusive, Weeded

white chicken feathers scatter across the lawn

red specks glisten wet grass thick with

dandelions.

                  the door to the coop is ajar.

beyond this    flight    thick rows of pine

dead limbs scratch and snap

                                               heart slows

deeper in the woods     skittish deer bed down

within the rectangle of a toppled sugarhouse

bucket rust.

                        pick up a brick and the wet

rotting leaf smell it holds down rises

the cold mass fills small hands.

an earthworm writhes in the vacancy

reddish centipedes scatter

a potato bug rolls in the palm.

About the Poet:

Charlie Malone recently returned to the Midwest to occupy a house in the woods outside a small town home to a not-exactly-small university, Ferris State. Malone studied literature and writing at Kent State and Colorado State and liked it just fine. He is grateful to all his students, teachers, colleagues, his wife, and the the kind editors who see something worthwhile in his work. Charlie's writings can be found in or are forthcoming with The Dunes Review, Phoebe, The Laurel Review, as well as the anthology A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park. 

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....Steve Langan

THE MIDWEST

I remember this old guy at the bar

where I worked gestured toward a girl

seated with friends at a round table

and said, You really need to learn to pause,

study the small of a woman’s back,

the parallel lines subtly curving upward—

are her shoulders little shouts or whispers?—

and her neck, slightly untuned, does it plead?—

to know how best to begin to pursue her.

But I was mainly interested in scoring then,

in showing you how many bottles I could

hold aloft in the dim light, and getting

and staying loaded for days at a time.

It’s rude to talk too much about yourself.

That’s what we learn here in the Midwest.

Days are numbered, we ask you to contribute

to the bottom line, to catch one another

in your sullen reproaches, crashing swoons,

make it look easy these next squalid hours.

Some little nitpickers claim we’re improving.

But we can’t all be angels of mercy or pain,

hunting and gathering, failing and building,

saving nothing for later, sleeping it all off.

About the Poet:

Steve Langan was born in Milwaukee and raised in Omaha. He earned degrees from the University of Nebraska and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Langan is the author of Freezing (2001), Notes on Exile and Other Poems (2005), Meet Me at the Happy Bar (2009), and What It Looks Like, How It Flies (2013).

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.