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. 

EDWARD MAYES, "UNTIL JUST SECONDS AGO, IF I MISSPOKE" (ISSUE 14)

UNTIL JUST SECONDS AGO, IF I MISSPOKE

Until just seconds ago, if I misspoke
And if I now stand corrected, or
An understanding finally of rain, as

If all the many deaths were the hailstones
That hit the olive trees last June, a histogram
Of death, a moment between stet and

Everyone else in a hurry, someone’s
Clamor trumping someone else’s clamor,
The clumsiness of something as simple

As night fall, into a day not unbroken,
And if it’s a sleep we can’t speak
About, the gnat clouds that try to lose

Their g’s, or to say the t in hatch, or would
That be a blot on one’s escutcheon, a drip
Of fresh red paint on the architrave, what

Warning, what bells rang in the shtetls, and
If we all are a bad batch, proof of the existence
Of bad gods, the kind that glitch, the kind

That botch, and us, apostatic and eldritch,
Seeing more glass through the glass, an armistice
Only for an instant, wet and worried and worn.


Until nearly daybreak night fell; steed, stud, arrest, instant, understand, static,
prostitute, insist, ecstasy, system; stage, stance, stanch, stanchion, stanza, stet,
circumstance, constant, cost, distant, extant, oust, restharrow; stalag, shtetl, apostasy,
switcheroo, bedstead, armistice (arm-stopping), solstice (sun-stopping); epistyle,
architrave; steer, stern; apostrophe; Pär Fabian Lagerkvist, Nobel Prize 1951

ABOUT THE POET

Edward Mayes’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and magazines, including The Southern Review, The New Yorker, APR, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, Agni, Harvard Review, and others. His books of poetry include First Language (Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press) and Works and Days (AWP Prize in Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press). Edward lives in Hillsborough, NC and Cortona, Italy with his wife, the writer Frances Mayes. Their latest collaboration is The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (Clarkson Potter).

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. 

DANIEL ARIAS GOMEZ, "FORTUNE COOKIE" (ISSUE 14)

FORTUNE COOKIE

You pick up the cookie and crack
it open. You spread the paper with your fingers
and read—Happiness begins
when you face life with a wink and a smile.
You snort and throw it away. And you wish
that just once you’d get a shitty fortune.
You wish the cookie would say that your father
will spend the next ten months in the hospital
with a plastic shunt sticking out of his skull
to drain fluid from his swollen brain
until he finally dies—you wish it’d say
that by the end, your father won’t even recognize
you, that he’ll be rambling about chickens
and horses, believing that he’s still in his ranch
in Mexico, that he’ll say he likes the pozole
when he’s eating a tuna sandwich you bought
for him in the cafeteria—you wish it’d say
that in his last moments of lucidity he will look
you straight in the eye, and he will tell you he’s sorry
for having been such a horrible father,
that you’ll answer that it’s okay, that you forgive
him—you wish the cookie would say
that when your father finally dies, it’ll hurt
more than anything has ever hurt
in your life, but that every year after his
death you’ll buy one of those cloying tres leches
cakes that he loved so much, and as you eat
it next to his ashes you’ll remember his calloused
hands cutting up the beef for the pozole
that he used to cook on Sundays after church,
and you’ll smile.

ABOUT THE POET

Daniel E. Arias-Gomez was born and raised in Guadalajara. He is currently a poetry student in the MFA program at CSU Fresno.

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.