Joshua Sauvageau 4/13/25 Joshua Sauvageau 4/13/25

Evolution of a Coffee Snob

1996, Minot

I’m sixteen, at Ryan’s Family Diner, where coffee costs fifty-nine cents (including unlimited refills). It’s after ten on a Friday and I’ve just come from the Fitz of Depression concert at Minot’s Collective Cultural Centre. A smoldering Djarum Black rests between my fingers. The butt matches my painted fingernails. My hair is bleached the color of the snow that’s piled on the windowsills of the diner. I stir two sugar packets and one room-temperature Land-o-Lakes creamer cup into a mug. The coffee slowly fades from mud to cardboard. The chintzy clink of a teaspoon along the ceramic walls of the cup blends with the clattering of plates that busboys load into plastic tubs. I lift the steaming brew to my lips and sip. I can feel the stares of the squares surrounding me as I scribble onto a napkin what I’m sure is a masterpiece:

Heathenistic hell flames!

burn at me! lap at me!

lift me and digest me once more

squeeze my juicy, rotten fruit, oh lord!

1998, San Diego

I’m visiting Lara after high school graduation. She’s at work when I decide to explore the city. First order of business is to find a coffee shop—one she recommended, called Starbucks. I order a grande (that’s what they call a medium) drip coffee and am thrilled to discover shakers of cinnamon, chocolate, and vanilla powder near the trash bins. There’s a park out front of the Starbucks where an ambulance is loading a dead vagrant onto a gurney. I stare for a while and then tote my coffee around the neighborhood, in search of a record store I found in the yellow pages. I purchase ska band Hepcat’s “Scientific” and pop the cassette into my Walkman as I bop among palm trees. I walk close to ten miles, stopping off to get my tongue and eyebrow pierced on a whim. Later that day, I tell Lara what I did all day and her eyes fly open. “What the hell, dude? Mom’s gonna kill me!”

Show code

2005, Persian Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz

I roll out of my rack just before twenty-two hundred hours, pull on my poopy suit and stumble down the p-way to the aft galley. I approach the coffee canteen and fill up a styrofoam cup with lukewarm sludge, before climbing down the ladder to the bowels of the ship—the Reactor Compartment. I relieve the mid-watch, settling onto the operator’s chair. I run my gaze across the board. Dozens of dials, meters, LEDs, warning lights, buttons, and triggers stare back at me. I pray to god that nothing out-of-the-ordinary will happen over the next six hours and take a long stinky pull from my cup. Having taken my hourly logs, I flip to the last page in my clipboard, where I’m writing what I’m sure is a masterpiece:

Blue sky, blueberry,

Blue sea,

bluer than Robert Johnson

2007, Brisbane

I wake up at a bed and breakfast outside Brisbane on Lacey & Adam’s wedding day. Breakfast is served outdoors on a sunny patio, in the shade of sweet viburnum. We have warm bialy rolls with Vegemite, orange wedges, and a French press. I pour myself a small cup and taste coffee like I’ve never tasted coffee before. I catch flavors of blackberry, pine nuts, and somehow, honeysuckle. When I get back home, I throw out my Mr. Coffee and never look back.

2014, Edgewater

The best part of my day is early morning. I bike down to Coffee Studio on Clark and Olive. They make the best coffee in the city, I’m sure to tell anyone who asks. I order a single-origin pour-over and a red velvet donut. I sit on the sidewalk and watch the buses and cars stalled bumper-to-bumper. It’s early September and there’s a crispy chill in the air, though it will heat up by midday. It takes five minutes before the barista—Clarice, a clarinetist—calls my name. The oversized mug is filled all the way to the top and the deep brown liquid has a sheen on the surface. Lacy ribbons of steam rise up out of the mug. I slowly bring the coffee to my lips and sip. This moment makes the rest of my day, processing timesheets at the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, feel a little easier. I pull out my notebook and compose what I feel is my masterpiece:

The entire goddamned globe is always

within arm's reach, now.

Our once-beautiful faces

seared in a pale blue light--

dead dahlias drooping in a stiff autumn breeze

2021, Horner Park

I wake up at five every day, even on weekends. This is my golden hour; the one hour I have to myself before I start getting the inevitable early morning trouble-calls from work. I light the kettle, pour precisely eighteen grams of coffee beans into my burr grinder and press the button. The fresh grounds are of perfect consistency, like dried beach sand. I pop an unbleached circular paper filter on to the end of my aeropress, pour in the grounds, and once the water temperature reaches two-hundred degrees, I bloom the grounds. Steam rises up and I catch the first whiff: rose petals, dark chocolate, mown grass. I pour in the remaining eight ounces of water, stir for thirty seconds and slowly press the plunger into my favorite mug. I take a luxurious sip and gaze out my living room window, past the reflection of my hair, which is turning white naturally now, to see the sun shimmering through the honey locust branches. I open my laptop to a new email. Floating atop the dozens and dozens of rejection letters, I can barely believe the text: “I am delighted to inform you that your poem has been chosen for publication…”

Joshua Sauvageau 4/10/25 Joshua Sauvageau 4/10/25

Scene with sons at the dinner table

April is National Poetry Month! I aim to post a poem each weekday in celebration of the form. Some old, some new, some published, some never-before-seen.

As I mentioned in a previous post, poetry is everywhere. As I mentioned in another previous post, I am a childless pug-papa, but I have three nephews and two nieces, ranging in age from 3 to 24. I am grateful that over the past few years, I am proximally closer to my parents and to one of my sisters and her family. On one of my recent trips to visit them, I witnessed what is described in the poem below. A brief moment, but a moment that made my heart melt. A moment of love—in as much as men in our society can and do show love.

The original title for this poem was “My nephew feeds a cucumber slice to his grandpa” but it was too convoluted, too hard to follow. In revision, I simplified it by changing the name of my nephew and adjusting the relationship of the speaker (poet’s voice) as the father—observing the actions of the generation before him and the generation after him.

This is also one of my recent favorites, never before published online or elsewhere, but a poem which I read at my first-ever poetry reading at the Cannon Falls VFW last autumn.

Scene with sons at the dinner table After his seventh or eighth shake of salt onto the cucumber medallions which I have laid before my boy, I plead with Grayson not to eat them. Too much salt is like, really bad for you, bud. His eyes flip, moan, tackle mine: Conor McGregor hammerfisting Dr Phil. I think of my co-worker Bob, my age, and on a mandatory low sodium diet, courtesy of his cardiologist. I think of Grampa, an eighth-grade grad, who as a farmboy during the Depression, ate lard sandwiches for supper— that porky paste under his French tongue— and succumbed to his second heart attack. I think of Dad, aged 79, whose open-heart surgery and twice-grafted aortic aneurysms haven’t slowed the pace at which he cooks and consumes pot roast, meatloaf, bacon-wrapped bacon; who, for as long as I can recall has sprinkled salt into cans of Hamm’s, canned ham, tomatoes, flesh of watermelon. And Grayson, sitting in his usual place at Dad’s elbow looks up at him, laughter boiling in the teapots of his eyes, as he dresses his dinner in a crystalline sweater. Dad, distracting him with the guillotine chokehold flashing from his forty-inch console TV, taps the cucumber slice once, like an ashy cigarette, against the lip of Grayson’s Darth Vader dinner plate, and eats it himself.

Joshua Sauvageau 2/28/25 Joshua Sauvageau 2/28/25

February 2025 Recap!

Mad as the mist and snow

Bolt and bar the shutter,

for the foul winds blow:

our minds are at their best this night,

and I seem to know

that everything outside us is

mad as the mist and snow.

—William Butler Yeats

What a wild ride February has been. America, it seems, is exhausted. How are you, dear reader? The yoga teacher in my wants to remind you to take extra time today (and every day if you are able) to just breathe. Maybe that’s right now; this moment. Just close your eyes and take three deep breaths. I’ll wait…

Great start. Let’s keep it up!

I’ve been looking for service opportunities this month. And writing; writing has helped. I stole my good buddy Tommy’s idea and volunteered for Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. Orientation takes place in early March, and I hope to be building homes in underserved neighborhoods by the time you read my next newsletter (which, thank you, by the way). I volunteered to review grant applications for PFund, a local foundation “which helps build more equitable communities for queer people in the Upper Midwest”. While looking for opportunities in the veteran hospice space, I came across an organization called Grace Hospice. There are opportunities at Grace Hospice to perform legacy work (helping people write their memories), pet therapy (I’m looking at you Churro!), patient companionship, and vigil work as well. I had a nice conversation with their volunteer coordinator Bryan, who told me they currently don’t have any veteran volunteers, which I found shocking! Orientation for Grace isn’t until April, but I’m eager to help out in that space as well.

[Quick aside: a number of years ago, I recorded an a cappella group called the Threshold Singers, which sings at the beds of hospice patients. Here’s one of their songs:]

So what? I hear you asking. Do I hear the dreaded bells of “virtue-signaling” ringing across the land? [That’s what “They” want, by the way, to turn us against each other with labels and buzz words. Don’t fall for it, friends. Use your brains, use your hearts.] Here’s the reality: I have time to spare, and my conscience can only rest when I know that others in my community aren’t needlessly suffering.

*My favorite picture of my grandma Helen. Unknown date, likely early 1940s.*

If you had told me a month ago that I’d be spending my writing time in February working on various genealogy-centric essays, I simply wouldn’t have believed you. Yet, here we are. It started, as I thought about my grandma Helen (Thue) Sauvageau in early February—she passed away in February of 2017. As I thought about her, I created an account on FamilySearch and pretty quickly started finding information about the Sauvageau and Thue side of the family (my dad’s folks). It’s pretty wild, but I was able to track the Sauvageaus back to Marcé-sur-Esves and Poitou-Charentes, France in the 1640s. I traced my Grandma Helen’s grandparents to Møre og Romsdal and Hallingdal, Norway in the 1860s.

*Helen Sauvageau’s parents: Albert Peder and Inga Olive (née Braaten) Thue. Prior to 1953. According to Dad, this was taken at their old farmstead near Kindred, ND.*

My mom’s family was a bit harder to trace, but I’m making some progress there. I wrote a little about my research and findings regarding her maternal grandmother, Edna Celina (née Melsness) McGough here.

In the process of that research, I registered for an account with Newspapers.com, which features a wealth of digitized newspapers from around the world. Cross-referencing these with family tree sites, military drafts, and census information has allowed me to feel closer to my long-gone ancestors than I ever imagined. I had no idea, for instance, that my great-grandfather Arthur Lemke’s brother Albert died in a house fire which started when he fell while smoking a cigaret [sic]!

February was a good month for adventures in Classical music. For my birthday, Leah got me tickets to a Schubertiade performance by the Schubert Club, featuring local band Kiss the Tiger at a Saint Paul bar called Amsterdam. As a big Schubert fan, it was great to hear some new and traditional takes on his music.

*Schubertiade at Amsterdam featuring Kiss the Tiger*

I got to record my second opera in February: Snowy Day, as performed by the Minnesota Opera. Joel Thompson composed Snowy Day in 2021, based on the 1962 children’s book of the same name by Ezra Jack Keats. It was a lovely opera, and since I was recording it for work, I got to see it four times (during rehearsals) prior to the opening night recording. Check out a promo from the production below!

Then, back at MPR HQ, I got to record audio for countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and pianist John Churchwell, as they performed music of Robert and Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Wolfgang Korngold. I’ll likely post a video of that in the next month as well.

Something fun

〰️

Something fun 〰️

Something fun that we did in February was taking Churro to Pug Night at Unleashed Hounds and Hops in the North Loop of Minneapolis. Beer and pugs: what could be better? I counted about 40 other pugs, and of course dozens of other breeds. We even met another fawn pug named Churro and talked to her parents for a while too.

The Human Caterpillar *of pugs named Churro*

*Churro giving strong “can we go home now” vibes*

Until we meet again, dear reader, keep breathing!

Joshua Sauvageau 2/16/25 Joshua Sauvageau 2/16/25

Last Letter Home

A poem, discovered in an unlikely place.

In 2022, I received an ancient record from my supervisor, Mike. “This is a personal favor for a friend,” he said. I held the yellowed wax and paper disc by the edges and read the name on the label: SEAMAN GEORGE S—

I looked at Mike with fascination. What is this?

“It’s a letter, on record, from this young sailor to his family, before he shipped out in the Pacific theater during World War II. He never made it home.” Mike paused and looked at me. “Most of his family is gone now too, but this friend of mine is a relative and he’d love to hear it.”

As a Navy veteran myself, and in my current capacity as an audio engineer, I was eager to take this project on. The process of transcription was an arduous one. The record was so old and warped that it was very difficult to discern what was said. I digitized it and then set about “cleaning” the audio through various audio restoration software. The result was good, but it was no magic wand. It was still very difficult to hear what SN George S— had to say.

[Actual audio from this digitization of the record]

So I set about creating a transcript of what I could make out. If the family of our sailor was unable to hear all of the words, at least I could make my best effort at writing what I heard. Again, this was a painstaking process of listening, rewinding, scrubbing the audio. As I slowly re-created the transcript, I started to see, in the repetition, in the slow choosing of words, a kind of poetry emerging. Not that this sailor was a poet (for all I know he may have been), but the way this 70-year-old audio was conducting through my ears, to my brain, and out my pen, was a transliterative process of sorts.

Finally, after weeks of cobbling together the cleanest version of the audio and my transcript to deliver to Mike, I started forming a poem from the record. Utilizing the repetition of the transcription, utilizing the space and the thought and the imagination that I needed to access what was being said, this piece began to emerge.

I call it Last Letter Home, and it was published in North Dakota Quarterly Volume 90 Issue 3/4.

[My reading of the poem, if you prefer]

Joshua Sauvageau 1/31/25 Joshua Sauvageau 1/31/25

Still Life in Red, White, & Blue

We lean along the fog

like Otis Redding’s airplane

On the morning of September 26, 2016, I was making my morning bike commute down Damen Ave in Chicago. I whizzed past stalled traffic, wondering why the street was uncommonly jammed, but soon noticed flashing lights in the distance. As I approached the intersection of Damen and Addison, I came across a scene that will haunt me forever. A bicyclist’s worst nightmare. A fatal accident. Everything became very quiet, very still. I got off my bike and walked it across the intersection as a cop directing traffic told me to “be careful out there.” My eye was drawn to the driver of the truck which caused the fatality. Disheveled, distraught, soiling himself. I can only imagine the trauma that he experienced and continues to experience to this day.

We lean along the fog

like Otis Redding’s airplane.

Horns honk.

Traffic is packed like

passengers on the Doña Paz.

EMTs stand and stare

into the mist

like veal calves.

A man in soiled blue jeans,

eyes rimmed red,

like the moon in Revelations,

breathing hard, receiving oxygen

in the back of an ambulance,

white as an avalanche.

The Schwinn,

like a robin’s egg

smashed flat

upon the asphalt,

something sticky,

(not quite yolk)

squeezed around it.

Nearby, a white vinyl sheet

with a cooling heap

piled beneath.

An unpluggable leak

laps against the grime.

Joshua Sauvageau 1/26/25 Joshua Sauvageau 1/26/25

January 2025 Recap!

Happy New Year, dear readers.

How long do you leave your holiday decorations up? On a New Year’s Eve walk with Churro, I counted several limp Frasier Firs piled up next to garbage cans. I heard on the radio that January 6 is one “traditional date” for taking down the Christmas tree and removing the lights from the eaves. My birthday is January 7, so in our home, Mom always left the decorations up until January 8, at my insistence. This year, we took ours down on the 18th. I always prefer to hold out longer than most, because winter is just so damn long. The darkness is so damn long. Christmas and the New Year come so early in the winter. What’s the rush to remove all the lovely decor?

For me, this month has been marred by trepidation. Trepidation about the state of our country and of the world. Trepidation about Mother Nature. Trepidation about social media and about AI. And—least importantly of all—trepidation about writing.

Social media use is on the decline it seems. At least in the circles I run in, the Meta-verse has become too odious to endure. Hear hear. It’s about fucking time. For someone who posts as often as I do (which is on the order of twice a day!), I am at last abandoning Facebook and Instagram. Threads was initially lauded as a viable alternative to X, but I am already tired of it’s vacuous algorithm. The fate of TikTok seemed sealed for a moment, but I’ve never understood the attraction, nor had any interest in creating an account. I spent some time this month starting up a Bluesky account and a Substack—which I’ve been putting off for too long. And I’ve been communicating with other friends on Discord and Signal. My only reason for remaining on the old-fashioned Facebooks and Instagrams was to keep in touch with my friends and family. Those platforms have obviously become less about connection and more about unchecked aggression, anonymous trolling, and an obscene amount of marketing for sub-standard consumer goods. YOU know what I’m talking about. Part of the reason I wanted to start this website was to spend less time on social media, and ideally, bring some of you along with me. (Thanks for reading this, by the way)

Speaking of my Substack, I posted a few older pieces there: a poem from 2022, a flash fiction piece from 2021, this prose piece from the same year, and a relatively new poem.

With the inauguration and all, I felt it fitting to post this Propagandhi song which I covered/recorded in 2020. It describes the gravitas our “leaders” should experience, but too often do not.

Nipples-deep

>>

Nipples-deep >>

Running? Yes. I’m nipples-deep in training for a spring 50k, which my Trail Pushers Alysha and Tommy dragooned upon me. Seriously, I’ve been needing the nudge to sign up for something longer than a 10k, so I was grateful to hear that they were signing up and urged me to join them. It will be my first ultra since Tommy and I ran the Grand Canyon in 2019. The 2025 Ice Age 50k takes place May 10, two weeks after Leah runs the Big Sur Marathon.

Another race that has been on my radar since 2018 is the Superior Trail Race. This one takes place north of Duluth, through scenic Crosby Manitou State Park, up through the Caribou Highlands and finishing in Lutsen. I haven’t run a 50-miler since September 2019, but I put my name in the hat for the lottery. On 1/18 I was notified of my acceptance to the race(!), which takes place September 6. Looks like a boatload of training coming up in 2025.

In keeping with the theme of trepidation, I applied for acceptance at a writing retreat here in our fair state. The Tofte Lake Center hosts two week-long residencies—one in June and one in September. It’s been a decades-long dream to spend time in nature, writing—without the distractions of work or social media (see above). I won’t be notified one way or the other until May 1.

I have also been working on a long-form essay to post here, dealing with my somewhat traumatic New Year’s Eve 2016. However, I’m not sure I am ready to share this one with the world yet.

I took myself to see a $5 matinee showing of Nosferatu on my birthday. I highly recommend it. I was particularly struck by the sound design as well as the camera-work and lighting. The last scene is beautiful and will haunt your dreams.

I’ve also been shooting film, and playing with double-exposures. Here’s one of my favorites that came from processing my most recent roll:

While I haven’t written much, I have made some bonkers videos over the past couple of months. I bought a 35mm / f0.95 lens last summer, Leah gave me a sweet little Aputure light for my birthday, and I’ve mainly been filming these abominations in order to get some post-production reps on both DaVinci Resolve and ProTools. Incidentally, I HATE shooting and editing 9:16—another symptom of our society’s hopeless addiction to TikTok and our devices. Make Landscape Sexy Again!

One clear highlight for the month was a visit from four dear Chicago friends: Tommy, Margaret, Alysha, and Chris. They were here in the Twin Cities for the annual Pond Hockey Tournament on Lake Nokomis. Tommy and I went on a couple of runs, wandered around the Como Conservatory and Zoo for the first time, and saw Frank Black at First Ave (Tommy’s first time there). We all cheered Chris’s hockey team, the Skateful Dead, and drank Labatt 1% over 18” of frozen lake ice. It’s always a special occasion when we can get together, along with our Saint Paul friends, Peter and Kristen, but this visit deserved a proper toasting, so we had cocktails at Gori Gori Peku (a Japanese whiskey bar), followed by a stunning meal at Owamni. I am still doubled over in pain from laughing, which is typical whenever this group assembles.

With all the trepidation in our individual lives and in the world, it’s nice to recall that spending time with loved ones can ease the burden—however fleetingly. Until next time, try to find peaceful moments and stay well, friends.