First, some announcements. Tao Yucheng invites the winners of the poetry contest he hosted earlier this year to contact him at taoyucheng921129@proton.me. He’ll send out the prize money this month. He also announces that no one person won the Honorable Mention (there was a tie among multiple pieces) so he will automatically enter those pieces in the next competition, which will be at a yet-to-be-determined date this summer.
Also, contributor Mykyta Ryzhykh has a new book out, Tombboy, from Lost Telegram Press.
“In his book, as in books of poems written in poetic forms and free verse, language moves through a pattern, and the basic organizing unit is the line. In tombboy, the line may be a syllable, a sign, an image, or even a dot… Readers may rightfully assume that many, even all the poems in tombboy are anti-war poems… yet it would be inaccurate to infer these concrete poems are doctrinaire, or purely political. Nor are they autobiographical. But they are personal, intuitive, original, and memorable, each with something to show…”
– Peter Mladinic, author of House Sitting, Knives on the Table and many other books
“tombboy is filled with an experimental spirit, combining fearless phrasing with satirical madness. The result is a fascinating examination of the human condition… it seems there are no limits to his masterful creativity. Each page of this book will grab your attention. tombboy deserves a prominent spot on your bookshelf.”
– Roberta Beach Jacobson, editor of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and smols poetry journal
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Welcome to Synchronized Chaos’ mid-April issue: A Chorus at the Threshold. This issue presents a chorus of voices singing, speaking, sometimes whispering, at different types of thresholds. People of different ages and backgrounds come together in this issue, each sharing thoughts, observations, and feelings at points of shifting and transformation.
Some of these thresholds are deeply interior. Adalat Gafarov Izzet oglu’s poetry is contemplative and reverent, with a focus on spirituality and the search for meaning. John Edward Culp speaks to self-discovery, love, and finding one’s own rhythm in life. Duane Vorhees’ poetry forms a cohesive meditation on struggle, distance, and the human effort to bridge impossible gaps—whether spiritual, emotional, or existential. Mesfakus Salahin’s piece highlights self-exploration in times of solitude, as Maja Milojkovic laments the increasing unwanted loneliness caused by the setup of much of modern life. Mahbub Alam probes the highs and lows and capacities of human nature, highlighting the need for empathy and compassion. Prasanna Kumar Dalai’s poetry is romantic and melancholic, expressing deep emotions and longing. Poet and physician Anwer Ghani suggests that despite our attempts to conceal our emotions, they can still be sensed and felt.
J.J. Campbell’s writing touches on his inner shadows: feelings of isolation, the desire for a simple, authentic life, and the pain of his loneliness and inner demons. Ana May likewise writes from the doorway between suffering and transformation, insisting that pain must be faced if it is ever to yield meaning. Fhen M.’s eerie poem recollects the legend of G. Bragolin’s Crying Boy painting surviving house fires, meditating on trauma and memory. Thi Lan Anh Tran depicts the complex, multilayered social and psychological effects of both romantic love and war. Amina Kasim Muhammad’s poem illuminates how people rebuild after the loss of a loved one, growing around rather than overcoming grief. In David Sapp’s vignettes and Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s scenes of personal and public tragedy, ordinary life itself becomes a threshold where loss is transfigured through memory and grief into reverence.
Other voices gather at the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Yeon Myeong-ji and Hamdamova Dilzodaxon Halimjon qizi craft scenes of family love, care, and loss. Their work, and Jacques Fleury’s return to his father and their childhood treehouse, all stand in that tender doorway between then and now. Sarvinoz Bakhtiyorova depicts the impact of remembering one’s past and how that can shape one’s identity. Here, affection survives distance and the past remains startlingly alive.
Nature, too, shifts throughout this issue, with pieces about seasons and the liminal spaces between dreams and reality. In Stephen Jarrell Williams’s idyllic vision, the act of learning to fly becomes an awakening into another mode of being. Elaine Murray’s visionary reflections on natural landscapes, Charos Ismoilova’s gratitude for the sunrise, Ananya Guha’s pensive thoughts on seasonal time, Graciela Noemi Villaverde’s vision of a world where humans protect and care for the natural world, Joseph Ogbonna’s song to a nightingale, and Brian Barbeito’s dream journey scenes of birds, constellations, and moonlight all invite us to the threshold between the visible and the unseen. Sayani Mukherjee’s luminous piece on the sacred mystery of existence completes this movement, reminding us that existence itself is a continual process of change.
History and heritage form another vital threshold in these pages—the place where inheritance meets the present moment. Dr. Jihane El Feghali’s tribute to Lebanon, radiant with resilience and memory, stands beside Ilya Ganpantsura’s portrait of Pushkin, writing in a nation poised between autocracy and intellectual freedom. Abdulaxilova Sevara’s meditation on Yusuf and Zulayha reveals divine and human love, earthly devotion blended with spiritual transcendence. Eva Lianou Petropoulou shares the tale of miraculous holy fire burning the day before Easter in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Lan Xin acknowledges the shared humanity and commonalities within the heritage of the world’s people, finding harmony within global religious teachings, and Bhagirath Chowdhary echoes that sentiment in his poem. Mohizoda Xurshiq qizi Roziqova discusses Uzbekistan’s legacy of teacher-apprentice training in the trades as Shokhida Nazirova highlights the Uzbek government’s investment in youth education, athletics, and personal development. The works rooted in Uzbek heritage further remind us that culture survives through crossings: hand to hand, teacher to student, voice to voice.
The chorus also rises at the threshold leading to justice.
Sim Wooki confronts racism and colonial power, while Patricia Doyne and Manik Chakraborty write from the brink where historical violence and oppression not only cast a shadow upon the present, but continues to this day. Alan Catlin and Stephen House stand at the moral threshold of witness, asking what it means to remain human before scenes of suffering, ecological damage, and collective harm. These are works that refuse the comfort of distance. They ask us not merely to observe, but to consider the ethics of paying attention.
Elsewhere, the collection turns toward personal thresholds of growth and development. Axmatova Maxliyo Ag’zam qizi discusses challenges in ESL education. Satimboyeva Risolat Ilhomboy qizi compares AI technology to the human brain as Adkham Mukhiddinov outlines how integral calculus can function in economic analysis. Khamidova Shahzoda Kholbozor qizi’s poem extols the promise of Uzbekistan’s next generation as Tursunoy Akramjon qizi Umirzaqova highlights the potential power of computer technology to improve traffic flow and safety. Ibroximova Hayitbon Mirzoxidjon qizi explores another potential role for AI in education, developing individual study plans. Yoqubova Barnoxon Baxtiyorjon qizi suggests ways to harness digital technologies in preschool education. Yunusova Robiyakhon Khayotbek qizi discusses challenges and opportunities for new technologies in the financial services sector. Charos Yusupboyeva outlines the promise of online education for remote areas. Doniyorbek G’ulomjonov and Tillayeva Muslimaxon Yashnarjon qizi examine the evolving role of technology in education, Saitkulova Fotima reflects on how living standards and education have greatly improved over the years in Uzbekistan, Axmatova Maxliyo Ag’zam qizi suggests ways to improve language students’ writing competence, O’rinova Diyora outlines methods for improving language learners’ speech, Kurbanova Mohinur Abdumuxtor qizi discusses challenges in translating idioms between English and Uzbek, while Rakhmonova Gulzoda Sodiq qizi stands at the threshold of a career in medicine, drawn forward by compassion, intellect, and personal resolve.
Jernail S. Anand looks at compassion, care and the consequences of individual actions. Mykyta Ryzhykh highlights the dissonance between our ideals of gentleness and innocence and abusive human behavior that falls short of these ideals. Asalbonu Otamurodova’s reflections on boundaries offer another kind of threshold: the necessary line where care for others must meet care for the self.
Art itself becomes another form of threshold, creating space for various ideas and sensibilities to meet and overlap. Noah Berlatsky considers how even a weathered, broken artwork can convey meaning, how the breakage can become part of the work. Doug Hawley and Bill Tope’s joint short story humorously compares an ordinary couple with historically famous idealized sculptures of people, finding in favor of the average, imperfect, but real, married couple. To’lquinay Ubukulova points out creative people’s current dependence on technology of various sorts. Jerrice J. Baptiste’s poems and paintings of women highlight their individuality, strength of character, and connection to the natural world. Juraeva Aziza Rakhmatovna interviews Croatian writer and poet Ankica Anchia, illuminating her love for her nation and birthplace as creative inspiration.
Ummusalma Nasir Mukhtar celebrates the power of writers to move society forward through their creativity, as Bill Tope explores his personal literary motivations. Ri Hossain analyzes themes in his own poetry, highlighting his combination of materialism and surrealism and how he renders urban realities through free verse. Gionni Valentin’s fragmented thoughts, images, and reflections explore themes of creativity, self-discovery, and the human condition. Kandy Fontaine describes post-Beat poetics, defined by inclusivity, community, focus on embodied and lived experience with living writers, and rejection of hierarchies and trophies. Patrick Sweeney’s tiny poetic fragments touch on art, identity, nature, history, and relationships. Joshua Martin’s poems combine lexical debris, media fragments, bureaucratic residue, and historical ruin, while Mark Young’s fragmented transmissions emerge from different frequencies of reality.
What binds these many works is not sameness, but shared arrival. Each piece stands at some edge—of understanding, of memory, of identity, of survival—and from that edge it calls out. The result is a true chorus: not a single melody, but many voices meeting in resonance.
Chorus at the Threshold sums up this collection because every page invites crossing. Between sorrow and wonder. Between history and dream. Between the self we have been and the self we are still becoming. Yet, many of these doors remain open, so that the thoughts and impressions in one “room” carry forward along one’s journey or can be remembered.
May you enter these pages with openness, attentiveness, and the quiet recognition that something in you may emerge changed.
