Fragments II

Nora Hikari

You could bind the canon in skin, or parchment.But the truth was on pottery shards. The inconsequential.                  We are most honest when unprepared. Struck truthful                  in a moment of terror, without pen or paper. Write faster.Terror is always forthcoming. Like pressure on a specific point,which trickles outwards to reveal our honest faults. Splinter here.                  My people invent kintsugi. Less a technique and more a faith.                  Faith: that form erupts magnificent from the broken thing. Scar paint.We are helpless in the face of confession. In her upturned chin,begging, "Admit. Admit you need me. Admit you need love." I split.                  In the way the broken vessel is helpless to pour. No matter                  how much it tries to hold itself to a standard of function. Spill out.Gather up your dreams. Gather up the things you have named "dreams,"which are just the chipped plates of your dropped stars. Don't cry.                  Did you know tears are sieved blood? Spit, too. We are just                  one leaky vessel trying to keep everything in. Keep trying.

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Nora Hikari (she/her) is a disabled Chinese and Japanese transgender poet and artist based in NYC. She was a 2022 Lambda Literary fellow, and her work has been published in Ploughshares, Palette Poetry, Foglifter, The Journal, The Washington Square Review, and others. Her hybrid fiction, KISS ME FAST, was featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 for 2023. She was a reader at the 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival. Her chapbook, The Small Lights Of Her Heart, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Nora Hikari can be found on twitter and instagram at @system_wires

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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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