Jittery Nocturne

Kate Northrop

Outside after a bad dream —no stars,no canopy of leaves— just streetsand down those streets, like largeflat rocks in the middle of a stream, my neighbors' houses. ·But sometimes, walking around, straight aheadon sidewalks, I correspond with argumentsswimming at the heart of the houses, and move parallelt0 their interiors: old clothes, crates,canned peaches —everythingsinking to the bottom of the bottom of houses. ·Rain, starting slowly, thudsthe metal bottom of a boat— a sound you know in the middleof the night in houses. And there's a current pullingat the boat, the movement of debt— we do notown these houses. ·Often I am brushed on the leg —right in the kitchen!—by a fish, yet my sisters trust the integrity of houses.Lately I'm happy to be having the sex I am havingmost often now, inside of houses.Those tiny, inquisitive sea horses, flickeringhere and there— how they addressed us we will remember in houses. ·Later, like an allowance, the moon comes round: fat, whiteLater the moon floodsthe alleys, empties the rooms of our houses. ·How I know I am not happens most often in houses:creaking the floorboards, slowly breathing in houses.

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Kate Northrop’s recent collections are cuntstruck (C & R Press) and Clean (Persea Books). She lives in Laramie and is the Interim Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Wyoming.

Sugar House Review Issue 22

Spring/Summer 2021

Salt Lake City, Utah

Editors
Natalie Young
Nano Taggart
Katherine Indermaur

Sugar House Review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit poetry publisher based out of Utah. Our mission is to promote an eclectic range of poets through publishing and live events to build nationally connected literary communities and foster the literary arts in Utah. We are excited to be some of the first people to see your work and to help the best of that work become available to a larger audience.

Sugar House Review was founded in 2009 by John Kippen, Nano Taggart, Jerry VanIeperen, and Natalie Young. At the time, it was the only independent, print poetry journal in Utah. Our name is based on both our location and desire to publish sticky, heart-racing, sweet, sweet addictive poetry. Sugar House is a neighborhood within Salt Lake City, named after the sugar beet factory of the Deseret Manufacturing Company (1851–1855).

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