Colored Catastrophe

The world was colors. The streets were made of buttons and a fabric sky was raining droplets of paint that splatter on the world. My cheeks turn to a river of yellows and pinks and blues. They swirl down my arms and into my boots, landing with little plinks as they fall from my fingertips. Sequins stick to my eyes and I assume it’s gotten cold enough to snow. Paint dries on my skin and sticks me in place, staring at the sky. Arms outstretched, eyes wide, mouth wide. 

Pom pom’s land on my tongue and dissolves like cotton candy. Dripping sweet, bitter, sour, cold, boiling. Streaming through my body till I break out of my cast. Running, walking, skipping, bouncing upon textiles. A person stands on the corner, stick still. I wave and get nothing back. My feet slow and I circle them only to find the person is entirely flat. 

On an impulse I poke them and they crumple, colors mixing into brown water and swirling down a nearby drain I hadn't noticed before. I freeze before I dismiss the odd moment and keep waking, a strained smile on my face. I walk and walk for what seems like hours and probably is because when I finally reach the once distant city, the fabrics have gone black. 

Entirely, there’s not a single star. Something moves in my peripheral and I spin fast only to see brown water trickling down the slope of the street. Another movement and I catch the last of a paper person sloshing to the ground with a squelch. I stare for a long moment, watching the water swirl down the street. Before walking away hesitantly, heading further into the city. 

The sidewalks are empty as I wander, though occasionally water flips over my boots. I get so lost in thought that I don't notice when I enter a paper filled clearing until a frail hand taps my shoulder. I turn and the person looks me right in the eye for a long moment before promptly splashing downwards onto the pavement. Its friends follow suit and the square floods. It picks me up and takes me winding back through the city, back through the wilderness, all the way back to where a cast made of paint lays limp on the ground. 

A portal similar to the one I arrived through waits there. It’s gray now. Gray like the world I live in. It was colorful before, inciting, inviting. This world is odd and the paper people are dying but it’s beautiful and marvelous. I’m not so sure I want to go back. The water pushes and I stumble into the gray. The blinding light vanishes quickly and I'm standing in my living room, alone. I move my hand to wipe my eyes only to realize, I'm a paper person and my feet are wet.

Five Untitled Monostichs

january pioneer stephen tomorrow

—

transfiguration half-dollar

—

polk high a daylight coin sauce

—

paper snakes a panther painting

—

spinning plates for laundry money a scene of freezing

—

bio/graf

J. D. Nelson’s poems have appeared in many publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *Cinderella City* (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Examine Mary Oliver’s Sleeping in the Forest, Twelve Moons with critical commentary.

“The special puzzle of Romanticism is the dialectical role that nature had to take in the revival of the mode of romance. Most simply, Romantic nature poetry, despite its long critical history of misrepresentations, was anti nature poetry […] Romantic or internalized romance […] tends to see the context of nature as a trap for the mature imagination.” Harold Bloom’s The Internalization of the Quest Romance

“It is the destiny if consciousness […[ to separate from nature, so that it can not only transcend not only nature but also its own lesser forms.” Georey Hartman’s Romanticism and Anti Self- Consciousness

Bloomian and Hartmanian tradition of Mary Oliver’s romantic nature poetry dichotomizes the antitheses between nature and self, body and soul, consciousness and unconsciousness, subject and object, nature and culture, language and muteness, death and immortality, imaginative speaker and immature child, transcendence and immanence. The speaker of the poem recollects the mystical closeness and amity with the natural world as suggested by the ritualizes camp trip sojournings in the forest floor of the maternal earth engulfs her like “as if she feels in water”. Herein the poet laureate superimposes the visionary selfhood upon “a stone on the riverbed”; because her drowsiness is not a blankness but the labyrinthine “lichens and seeds”.

The poet and the speaker impersonate Wordsworthian philosophical mind and Yeatsian Artice of Eternity through mimetic imitation of rocks, stones and trees of Wordsworth “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”. Witches, spinsters, crones and mother nature begin to speak for themselves, they transvalue their romantic forefathers’ mythic assessments as they defy the doom of muteness placed on all these female others who inhabit masculine poetic landscapes. Mary Oliver’s poetic revolutions embody mystical consciousness and experience of renewal. From the core of the heart’s engravings, Oliver’s everlasting bonding with nature in the face of sober truth memorializes the unity of the natural despite forsaking the association of supernatural eternity; her poems follow the cycles of the seasons to image loss and the possibility of renewal. Linda Gregerson reviews noteworthily, “She is not so much moved by the works of man, and she somehow contrives to love the world more than she loves language, no common feat for an artisan who works in words.”

Gratitude and reverence of the lyrical naturalist’s ardour of romantic nature poetry proclaims testimonial “I am sensual in order to be spiritual” amidst postmodern milieus. There is a fusion of Transcendental, Buddhist and Christian imageries grounded firmly in the earth, which Oliver views as God’s corporeality. Contemporary mystic of American poetry Mary Oliver stalks the edges of the marshes, journeying deep into the forests to open her breast to the known and the unknowable “as if the edge of sweet sanity” where “wild blind wings open” to interrogate nature of the soul, about its relation to the earth, about the damage of dualism it seeks to separate soul from body, body from earth and earth from the ultimate mystery of the immeasurable and unutterable nature of God heralded by Enlightenment.

Mary Oliver’s rapture with the nature such as the creatures of the wood and the sea, birds of the air, plants of the elds, trees of the forests—this is the liturgy of living things that the poet consistently dwells with and upon the elusiveness of the never-ending rosary.

Further Reading
Janet McNew’s [St. John University] Mary Oliver and the Tradition of Romantic Nature Poetry, Contemporary Literature 1969, Volume. 30, No. 1, pp. 57-77, University of Wisconsin Press Journals Division
Todd Davis’s The Earth as God’s Body: Incarnation as Communion in the poetry of Mary Oliver Christianity and Literature, Summer 2009, Volume 58, No. 4. Pp. 605-624

Examine William Blake’s A Poison Tree with critical commentary.

“A Poison Tree” is a counter myth which expresses the Biblical narrative of the Fall as a tree burlesquing the “Tree of the Forbidden Fruit”. Forbearance of the Wrath of God is anticipated in the allegorical symbolism of the poisoned tree as poetic vehicle, abstraction of human situation [repressed anger]. “I was angry …;/…my wrath did end.” propositional content and grammatical structure clash with substantiation of adjectival noun from angry towards wrath or indignation manifested as seven deadly cardinal vices that these lyrics implied in the metamorphosis of the whole poem. “I was angry with my foe, /I told it not, my wrath did grow.”——this couplet’s propositional content concerns the intensification of emotion, a subject now reinforced by the shift from angry to wrath. The shift is mediated by the pronoun “it”, which is indeed in this lyric Janus-faced part of speech; wrath can be cultivated following the verbs “watered” and “sunned”: “And I watered it in fears/
Night and morning with my tears;/ And I sunned it with smiles;/And with soft deceitful
wiles.”——–

Wrath is watered and sunned with fears, tears and soft deceitful wiles; water’s alkalinity provides nourishing nutriment for the sustenance of the poison tree as the language oscillates between the conceptual and the phenomenal to provide a tangible equilibrium between the tenor and the vehicle. “And it grew both day and night/Till it bore an apple bright” —–herein the intense cultivation of anger culminates in literal incarnation which the poem’s conclusion is the incredible transformation despite the occurrence that cannot be gainsaid: “And my foe beheld it shine/And he knew that it was mine/ And into my garden stole/ When the night had veiled the pole/ In the morning glad I see, /My foe outstretched beneath the tree.”

Blake intends us to take the embodiment of deep malice and disdain to be the literalization of Milton’s Satanic forbearance from the forehead by the conceiving of sin. Objects become extensions or projections of the human agency as exploratorily examined in “A Poison Tree” in which the correspondence between human and the natural is […] pronounced […] “the apple bright of the poem” suggest [ing] […] a process where intense emotion repressed, because of binding social codes, is rendered into a tangible symbol.” The power of mind transcends that of the power of the matter in Blakean perspectives and poetic appreciation anthropomorphizing the inanimate and insensible to be personified symbolism of realistic living forms rather than mere poetic device of similitude.

Since […] “These poets knew that “All deities reside in the human breasts and their poetic tales or mythologies were imaginative account of imaginative reality and thus true” In other words, that the virtue of Christian forbearance is the psychological repression mythopoetically. For Blake the truth behind Genesis is that emanates anciently—and paradigmatically ——-a sneaking serpent of a man sought in the vested venture of vengeance blossoms into a fascinating macabre of incarnational narrative within
hermeneutic tradition.

Further Reading
Phillip J. Gallagher’s [The University of Texas at El Paso] The Word Made Flesh: Blake’s “A Poison Tree” and the Book of Genesis, Studies in Romanticism, Spring 1977. Volume 28, No. 2, William Blake 1757——-1827, Spring 1977, pp. 237—–249.

Fingerprints

            Before I sat down today, I scored an orange, a cross over the green stem, and I wrestled with the peel to force it away from the flesh. I trimmed my nails last week to keep myself from picking at my raw fingertips, and I thought it was helping, until today when I felt a dampness on my skin. I looked down to see a bit of blood seeping into my cuticle. Not enough for it to be a problem, but it made my heart sink a little, because I thought I was past this. Now, when I plunge my thumb beneath the orange peel, between the seam I made, the acidic citrus leaks across the cracked skin and my hand pulls itself to my mouth to draw out the pain. The rawness has nearly migrated to the middle of my thumbprint, where it spirals into itself. I’ve been wondering, if I keep this up, will I get a new fingerprint? Will my one claim to individuality be rewritten? Maybe this is my chance for a new beginning. My fingers have been shaking all week and I do not know what to do to stop it. It’s not that I am anxious, I think it’s just something fundamentally wrong in my brain these days. I think that I am so lucky to have written evidence of the decline of my brain in this past week, but it makes me so sad. I could blame the start of the Spring Semester, or I could blame myself, but I think that it is both. Phoebe Bridgers in my headphones is not helping.

            I think I have moved on from the idea that growing up is causing all my problems, and it’s the sole reason I have been so sad. I think that I just need to get new friends. I need to wipe myself clean and maybe swim in the ocean and paint myself with sunshine, and wait for the good people to come to me. As it is right now, I love my friends so deeply it is killing me, and I cannot sit and wait for them to like me more. I think that the longer I wait, the harder it will be to say anything. What a bad sentence. I bet 300,000 people have said that sentence today. Today I stood in someone else’s kitchen, she made mac and cheese with the person that all of these things have been about, and I stood, in complete silence, wedged between the end of the stove and the wall. I have been making a habit of making myself small recently, and I am worried that it’s becoming an issue. I sit on the floor between two people I have known forever, and I shrink my legs down as small as they go. I sit in the darkness in the back of the car, listening, and not paying attention to my surroundings. When I go to say goodnight, what I hear from him is “I wish I was with my other friends instead of you.” Maybe that’s the real stupid sentence here. Or maybe both seem stupid because they are too much of the truth all at once. I have said all the wise things there are to say, I have made all the best, most thought out points ever said about one’s inner workings of the mind, and I think I have talked it all out. I am now left with the blind wondering. The silence that comes not from trying to think of an answer, but being without a question. That’s a good sentence.

Since the Playground is Gone

I want to wear
sandals and
colorful button up T’s
(to feel the muscles
around my lips
toughen
over time).

To step
where you step
with your step
but
I know
I cannot take your step

I want to remember
the seesaw
with you
pushing each other off swings
forgetting upstairs
and the stairs

I’ll try
to push
myself
but
you walked away
leaving me
kinetic
till I fall
back in place.

Mothers & Daughters

There were poems she would wait to publish until after her mother had died. That was if she were to outlive the old woman. Barbara-Jane: the reason she wrote, the stem of it all, the beginning and inevitably the end. After all, we all become our mothers. Carolina knew from too young an age that she, just like Barbara-Jane, would embrace death like a sweet relief, like the pills she hadn’t allowed herself to take. She believed she would die young because it was easier to imagine that her suffering wouldn’t last forever. Carolina wore pearls and spent recklessly, she refused to fall in love with anyone or anything but the term promiscuous.

And Barabara-Jane often reminded her. New England-born, New York-bred, buttered slices of bread on blue Italian china. Carolina remembered the home she had grown up in, Carolina remembered the sister-space she’d grown into. Older sisters become writers and younger sisters become actresses, it’s the way of the world. It was a yellow Victorian, white trim with a rosary buried somewhere beneath the foundation. Carolina wanted to be buried anywhere but near the house. Perhaps half a mile off from the Riverton prison’s burial plot, where her father lay. The river was lazy but the criminals weren’t, and Carolina was called an afterthought but her father was called bloodthirsty.

Half a mile was a safe enough distance from him, just as long as she didn’t smell like her mother. If there was one thing she should play safe, it was her proximity to her father’s dead body. Carolina only liked to play the victim, never to truly be victimized. Not like her mother. To hate her father for what he did to Barbara-Jane would be hypocrisy. After all, Carolina would not have been so kind. She would have finished the job. She would have killed the woman.

Welcome, readers, to mid-January’s issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine!

We recognize various observances this month: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s birthday, Holocaust Memorial Day, Clean Energy Month and World Braille Day and strive to make our publication as inclusive and welcoming as possible.

We are also hosting a free public literary reading in conjunction with the Association of Writing Programs conference next month in Kansas City, MO. This will be at 6pm on the evening of February 7th at Prospero’s Books. All are welcome to come and hear the readers!

Now for this month’s issue: Holding Up Our Corners of the Sky.

Don Bormon and Mahbub both encourage us to move forward into the New Year with optimism.

Sayani Mukherjee describes cultivating herself as if she were a garden. Chimezie Ihekuna urges young Nigerian students to apply the lessons of their education to their lives, values, careers, and future leadership.

Makhfiratkhon Abduratkhmonova illustrates one young Uzbek woman’s pathway to success and recognition as a writer and intellectual. Davronova Lobar advises parents on how to raise confident children, while Saida Ismoilova speaks to having the courage to pursue our dreams.

Farkhodova Nodira extols the good exercise, glory, and discipline involved in playing sports. Dildora Toshtemirova reminds her fellow Uzbek nationals of the many vocational training opportunities in the country while Shabnam Shukhratova outlines the advantages of study-abroad programs for enriching students’ lives.

Taylor Dibbert also reflects on travel, in his piece where the speaker’s life begins to make more sense when he has a change of scene and visits Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Daniel De Culla provides an earthier travelogue, about local customs on a trip to Morocco.

Maja Milojkovic’s poem compares working artists to fish in an aquarium, constantly observed while trying to accomplish something meaningful. Graciela Noemi Villaverde touches on the more personal side of her poetic practice in a piece where she “meets” with her poetry.

Sitorakhon Buriyeva reminds us that life is short so we should make moral choices and make the most of our time.

J.K. Durick’s poetry explores our human limitations, what we can and cannot accomplish or change in life. J.J. Campbell dredges up the frailty of midlife: loneliness, physical weakness, awareness of one’s mortality. Niginabonu Amirova ponders human destiny and how we must all die, while Maftuna Sulaymonova highlights the cycle of life with a poem where a daughter cares for her aging mother.

Priscilla Bettis also looks at mortality, with gentle haikus about grief and the burial of a loved one. Mesfakus Salahin reminds us that we are all mortal and will all arrive equally empty-handed in the grave. Sabina Abdulazizova’s poetic speaker speculates on how she’d like to be remembered.

A.G. Davis’ poetry evokes death imagery alongside that of outer space and the mythical underworld. Christina Chin and Uchechukwu Onyedikam’s collaborative haikus also reference death and the underworld, alongside space aliens.

Faleeha Hassan’s lush, imaginative poem illuminates the death of creative imagination that is writers’ block. Noah Berlatsky evokes the impermanence of memory and how past relationships fade into the background.

Jerry Langdon illustrates the storm of heartbreak, when his speaker is no longer able to pull into the safe harbor of his past partner. Mavluda Rusiyeva also describes the intense pain of a broken romantic relationship. Gulsanam Abdullayeva speaks to lost love and heartbreak, while Mohichehra Rustamova quests for interpersonal and emotional peace while grieving having caused someone pain.

Maid Corbic’s poetry extols giving love, but recognizes that his love has limits because of his humanness. Cheryl Snell’s work also probes the limits of love, as she relates coldness and neglect within family relationships.

In contrast, John Culp talks of persevering in love, not shutting the door on each other, even in intense moments. Shukratova Shabnam offers a lament and a tribute to a mother’s hard work and sacrifice while Dildora Toshtemirova probes the complexities of a mother and daughter’s relationship.

Kristy Raines writes of a gentle companionship while Sayani Mukherjee evokes a moment where she meets with God, envisioning perfect communion and realization of her best self. In Charos Makhamova’s piece, spiritual and human love commingle, while Elmaya Jabbarova narrates a vivid dream of a spiritual union with a loved one from whom she draws inspiration. Abdusodiqova Fotima urges people to come to God with their pain, as He is a perfect listener.

David A. Douglas’ formal poem shows a bystander, powerless to prevent the train wreck he’s watching, but infused with courage from his faith to endure being a bystander and bear witness to the scene.

Favour Raymond also bears witness, to domestic violence and its impact on children. Daniel De Culla critiques and diminishes the power of today’s warmaking leaders by locating them within the historical context of other warlords whose empires have come and gone. Mykyta Ryzhykh describes the violence of modern warfare, yet illustrates how life as a whole perseveres and outlasts the individuals who are killed. Evie Petropolou urges world leaders to pursue peace and justice and for all people to remember our interdependence.

Bahora Boboyeva conveys the terror of a family facing political or ethnic persecution. Jeff Rasley describes a riot where activists leave ordinary passersby to bear the brunt of repercussions for their actions.

Brian Barbeito witnesses and laments people’s increasing post-pandemic harshness and pettiness. Arthur Chertowsky describes slowly losing his ability to read or listen to books as he ages, wondering if he is slowly dying away as he ages.

Fayzullo Usmonov narrates the struggles he faced while growing up in poverty and earning a hard-won university admission. Many other contributors discuss education, including Rejabova Dildora, who outlines modern teaching methods for primary education, Mashxura Maxammatova, who suggests innovative methods for teaching English to youngsters, Fatillaeva Nehrinoz, who discusses language instruction in higher education, Shamuratova Shoira, who highlights podcasts as a tool for language learning, Malika Isomiddinova, who covers new methods for teaching vocabulary, and Alisher Ergashev, who goes into information technology tools for teaching foreign languages.

Farrukh Amirov’s poetic speaker escapes real-world injustice through retreating into the historic poetry of his nation.

Dilnoza Xusanova remembers Erkin Vakhidov, a versatile legend of Uzbekistan’s literary heritage. Bahora Boboyeva discusses Bernard Shaw’s sophisticated analysis of social class, education, and personality formation in Pygmalion. Diyora Bakhodirovna outlines psychological theories of the concept and development of personality.

In his latest set of postwoman poems, Mark Young receives deliveries of various icons of history and culture. Lorette C. Lukajic offers up 13 different ways of looking at Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks, about the loneliness, or peaceful solitude, of being in a quiet cafe in the evening.

Duane Vorhees writes of history, the passage of personal and mythic time. Z.I. Mahmud’s essay analyzes how T.S. Eliot and Samuel Taylor Coleridge viewed the purposes of art and literature.

Mirzaliyeva Zarinakhan outlines the history of church reformer Jan Hus, while Daniel De Culla evokes the character of an old fashioned road cleaner. Rbs Nsj gives the background of the Village of the Saint shrine which faithful Uzbeks visit on pilgrimage. Farangiz Safarova discusses Korean greetings and social etiquette.

Arts video journalist and filmmaker Federico Wardal announces his upcoming interview with Italian journalist and music promoter Adriano Aragozzini.

Some more modernist writers play with language. Jim Meirose’s onomatopoetic tale appears to concern a spear-throwing game while Daniel Y. Harris encodes Proxy Godbot the Black Hat Hacker into verse that resembles software. J.D. Nelson contributes his signature word fragments for a piecemeal glimpse of the world.

Sitora Mamatqusimova contributes a paean to the glorious history of her native Uzbekistan. Boronova Sevinch and Nigora Togayeva take pride and find happiness and reasons for optimism in their country and family, while Mohinur Sotvoldiyeva outlines some historical Uzbek wedding customs.

Laylo Mamatova shares the history of the Central Asian spring holiday of Navruz, while Zuhra Ruzmetova waxes effusive about the beauty of Uzbekistan in the spring. Wazed Abdullah writes of the history embedded within a long-flowing river while Muntasir Mamun Kiron rejoices in the beauty of the land and culture of his native Bangladesh, Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa anticipates the fun of summer in an upbeat piece and takes comfort in gentle winds, and Mahbub Alam reflects on a foggy, quiet morning.

Isabel Gomez de Diego’s photography explores how people experience built environments, on small and larger scales.

Safarova Ozoda speaks to the impact of humans on the earth and the importance of preserving and caring for the environment.

Laura Stamps interacts with nature in a more personal way, through adopting a playful puppy!

We hope this issue will have moments of fun alongside those of beauty and tenderness and intellectual stimulation.