Sugared Water is a literary magazine produced in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Our seventh issue is bound in an inkjet printed cover with waxed Irish linen thread. Design & binding by printmaker Nicci Mechler.

Bound by hand & hand-trimmed.

EXCERPT

Molly Pershin Raynor

ON FLYING

feet, what do i need you for when i have wings to fly?

                                  —frida kahlo 

inside my blood there are one thousand joyarrows :

sugarmarrow when i bite the bone : skin freckled 

with thunderglitter : my whole body a mercymachine :

a meadow of miracle : a sunset of scabbedscar &

angelbruise : ruby to gold : gold to sea : so silvergreen :

so supermoon : so bent on breathing my littlebirdlungs :

so bent on flying my snakespine : my wildtoes : my 

tiltedcervix : my jewslopenose : how many nights i 

wished it away: all the wrongcurves : all the bitnails & 

fathips : the flatfrizz & stillsick : all the asthma & allergies 

& epilepsy & celiac & chronic fatigue & weak & weak 

& freak : until i read frida’s diary & saw her castcanvas 

cut off : until i woke to my own pain’s purpose. inside 

my blood there are one thousand mis-fired neurons 

& bursts of go(d) : the doctors got it wrong : my whole 

body right : my whole body : the first day of      spring.