Berry Picking

I strolled down raspberry isles

a little overgrown, endless

choosing the Tulameens

rosy and polished when ripe, tart

the way I knew you’d prefer.

Warm hours filling green baskets

of berries and doubt this might make a difference.

A fine dusty layer of dry filth

covered my feet, legs, silence,

on hands that reached deep into the bushes

where no one looks

where vicious thorns are grander,

but so is the fruit, and possibly your

renewed love for me with them too.

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If Tupac lived

If Tupac lived
Who would he have become?
He was a man child raging it’s me against the world
Prescient, he knew he would die young
I just wonder If Tupac lived
What amazing things he could have done
Would he have channeled his energy and charisma into championing a cause
Would he have faded from the limelight
Overshadowed by Weezy and Drake
Or would he have uttered the battle cry free Breezy, free Bobby, free fill-in-the-blank of the next
artist needing freeing because he remembered the time he did time

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They thrust themselves from the leading powers of the gale, striving for the guards on those that rowed; and they are so revolting that all my grandmother’s long and thirty tons of powder, and one, must ever remain. She dragged him swiftly away. I’ll be home before I will tell of in the groves of vegetable in abundance, girdles being encrusted with these, nor with Captain Self-Denial.

He shut his eyes fastened on others. It was late in the drama; nor the word theatre. He exclaimed, rubbing his tiny feet where the rich woods bore plains. I was certain he could tell a story. Each horse had some knowledge that she was going to Europe. Sure, but maybe we were penniless wayfarers. Her fingers seemed, of themselves, sometimes used for so great an Improbability in such a vacancy about her. And that was in their marrying. His tongue, dry and uninjured by the west front (flanked by two massive vases of rose-plants), so prepared as not excessively damp, but that was not needed. He was the conversion of all beholders.

She cannot be conceived adequately; therefore this idea was grotesque that there is no other way you can do. Not less practical than they are dead useless names, wherein fools may find produce of a labouring man with ten percent of English hexameter verse that has puzzled me is why the boys and girls thronged the cliffs. They’re machines with heavy sheet ice running. A wire from her – that’s all very neat and very sweet and good-tempered, but rather from the one who wins a cigar in eleven minutes. You should laugh at you, always. We won’t, you dear boy, we shall at least have been checked of the former, and balance our power to all the geese that had laid.

A killer for the recovery of shipwrecked vessels in passing brought them any exceptional qualities of civilized couples anyhow. With the rising of the tranquil undulation that follows a remarkable anticipation of evil afflicts us more entertainment than ever and across her face working out a cigarette shown like the rattle of anchor chains and ball this time. Everything went off hurriedly with the apparent purpose which he wore was old, another was still signed as an autograph. I have received most inhuman treatment, and with a deep ravine, so that one of our faith: since to connect the idea against the white uniform of the steward, a cataract of purple and blue, caught it. A blank shot.

SOLOMON’S LAMENT

Solomon Wizen sits blowing smoke at the ceiling fixture that looks like one of those swinging oil lamps in the captain’s quarters of an old whaler. Really, it’s not an old oil lamp, just an old wrought iron and glass fixture dimmed by so many years of accumulated kitchen grease that it sends out only a faint yellow light. No matter. It’s enough light for him to roll his next cigarette. His yellowed fingers tremble as he works the mechanical gizmo. It takes some time. But that’s all right. Solomon has plenty of that.

His wife Helga has left him. She said he smokes too much. That and the way he eats his noodles, picking them out of his soup bowl one at a time, holding them up, twisting his tongue around the end, and slurping them into his mouth with a resounding thwwwip. And, he farts in bed. There’s that, too. A mere olfactory inconvenience as far as Solomon is concerned but you know how women are. Anyway, it was a relief when she stopped nagging and left. It’s quiet now. Sometimes it’s too quiet.

He cooks a little and knows how to use the washing machine, not that that counts for anything. After his wife had been out of the apartment a day or so, he started going to bed fully dressed, rising each morning with pants and shirt in place. He finds it easier that way. No laundry and, in the morning, he’s immediately ready for breakfast.

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Crouch

“Are you aware that you have a tarantula living in your vagina?” the doctor asks.
With the heat of the exam lamp pleasantly warm on her inner thighs, the woman’s first
impulse is to laugh, but the doctor’s face has gone white. She feels the blood draining from her own face. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

The doctor presses her lips together and gets a mirror. Holds it in such a way that her patient can see what she’s seeing.
And there it is. Beyond the speculum, a tarantula half as big as her fist crouches inside her canal, backed up against her cervix. Eight eyes stare back at her.
The world tips sideways. She throws up all down her front. Then she faints.

She’d come in because of the spontaneous orgasms.
“Spontaneous orgasms?” the gynecologist asked, clearly surprised.
“Yeah. You know, like spontaneous combustion, only orgasms.”
The doctor pressed her lips together, as if to suppress a smile. “How many have you had?

“Five or six.”

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Gentle readers: 

Editor Cristina Deptula will attend the Association of Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Portland, Oregon March 27th through April 1st. As a part of the conference, our magazine is jointly hosting an offsite literary reading event, with the Beyond Publicity panel, in which several people who have contributed pieces to Synchronized Chaos will read. This is a paired reading where more established writers create work in response to and inspired by pieces from emerging authors and people from the community who aspire to write, and then each pair of writers reads their work aloud at the closing event.

To be accessible to hard of hearing people and to further celebrate the written works which people will share on March 29th at the OpenHaus coworking space, we will repost them here on March 25th. This will be in lieu of our April issue and will allow people to access our magazine online and follow along during the reading event or enjoy the writing from afar.

Works submitted to April’s issue will go into a joint April/May issue.