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.

Walking Into the Light

Announcement: Our co-editor Rui Carvalho has released a new book, Pieces of Hope. It will be available very soon. The book is a collection of short stories and poems translated in Portuguese, Spanish and English (and four also in Italian and one in Danish, with the help of the Danish Embassy here in Portugal).

ALSO – please feel welcome to join Synchronized Chaos Magazine next month at the Association of Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Portland, Oregon. I, Cristina Deptula, speak Saturday March 30th on a panel, ‘Beyond Publicity: Getting Your Book Out There in a Changing Media Landscape’ and we are hosting a partnered reading the night before at 6pm at the OpenHaus co-working space, where established authors create pieces inspired by the works of emerging authors and read together with them at this event.

I’m reading and participating alongside a large group, to which Leena Prasad, Ross Robbins, Joe Biel, Doug Hawley, Leticia Garcia Bradford, Lisa Loving and Gina DeVries have all provided intellectual, creative, practical and moral support and to whom we are incredibly grateful. We encourage all who will participate in this reading to contribute work to Synchronized Chaos Magazine in the future.

Now, for March 2019’s issue.

Many cultures’ creation stories involve the deity, or the first humans, naming creatures as they give life to them. In a way, we all do our own ‘naming’ process throughout life. This is more than simply choosing a word to call something or someone, but figuring out what kinds of categories and traits matter, and who is important and worthy of our attention.

What do we decide to notice, to value in life? Each of our submissions this month deals with naming, giving meaning to a part of our universe. 

In her monthly Book Periscope column, Elizabeth Hughes reviews LaVera Edick’s Cat Tales, Kitty Capers, the story of how people found love and companionship over years with their pet cats. She also discusses Clem Masloff’s Trees Unlimited, a novel in which characters have to sort through others’ actions to determine their true motives.

Vijay Nair’s poetry, along with Jeongeui Son’s paintings and accompanying artist statements, draw upon natural scenes and phenomena to reflect human emotions. Jeongeui’s flowing streams show us how not even pain lasts forever and we can recover from trauma, while Nair finds romance in couples snuggled up during winter and the delicacy of a butterfly.

Mahbub also looks to nature to convey how love distracts us, pulling us out of ourselves into connection with the larger universe. That shows up most poignantly in a touching piece where a spouse reflects on his need to appreciate his partner after many years and children together, and see the flowers the years and the many child-related responsibilities have trampled underground.

Chimezie Ihekuna, or Mr. Ben, as he is affectionately called, sends in the first installment of a no-nonsense relationship advice column, where he posits that sexuality is something powerful we should treat with respect.

J.D. DeHart’s poetry explores the meanings we ascribe to things and parts of ourselves. What do we do with our need for the sacred, with the ‘other’ within ourselves? How will we be remembered, or not?

Akinmade Zeal vividly portrays the tension between the world’s various attractions and the inner life necessary for a true spiritual person in his short story, where a young man experiences seduction both from sensual women in a nightclub and from showy, larger-than-life personalities within organized religion. What will he choose to revere as sacred?

Norman J. Olson asks similar questions in his travelogue about his journey with his wife to London. What do we remember, what stands the test of time? He and his wife see Motown music, pre-Raphaelite art and Mamma Mia, all of which we consider historically important artwork for different reasons.

Jaylan Salah offers a profile on Egyptian director Hisham Abdelkhalek, who is acknowledging and celebrating Egypt’s iconic historical Pharaonic past. Also, Abdelkhalek is making a statement about coexistence among faith groups by planning to have an all-Muslim cast in a film about the life of Jesus Christ..

Robert Quill contributes poems about writerly inspiration. This may come from within oneself or from the outside world. The detachment required to write may feel akin to visiting from space.

Serendipity Sprout reflects upon encountering an unusual, kindly, otherworldly gentleman, and she decides to give him and their time together value and remember him in her poem.

Jayne Marek lyrically muses about choosing to encounter life at its most authentic. She has real scars rather than tattoos, and is braving the awareness of reality needed to write and think, while approaching the physical and natural world in a similar manner. Her description of actual dirt and plants reinforces the literal, sober view of the world that she advocates.

Meanwhile, J.J. Campbell describes facing up to reality in a less brave and enthusiastic, but still poetic, manner. He’s stuck in what Buddhists would call samsara, contemplating endless, repetitive cycles of moderately tragic circumstances.

Two seated ancient peoples dressed in fur making metal tools, cave paintings in background