Poetry from Sada Malumfashi

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I No Fit Wash You
(For Nafeesa Jika)

My pen divulges snapshots:
Colognes of a girl
Breezing
Buried in swarm of handouts
‘You are beautiful’ I say
But words choke through windpipes
And chew as a ruminant.
Instead:
‘This course is boring’ I whisper.
I no fit wash you

Fingers browse catalogs of acclaim
My heart wrestles with my tongue to
Resist and arrest whining thoughts
Not to sprinkle too much doses of praise
And adoration.
“Your beauty makes my heart
Catapult and summersault
Pyramids of love in sands
Dunes, hills and mounted valleys
No matter how much I restrain
Your voice augments my heartbeat
With spells of laughter like breached pebbles
Yes!
Soothing flesh perusing tones
Like fire burning through your throat
Makes infinite pieces of joy
Gush on tarmac of my eyes”
All these asleep on roof of my mouth
I do not say because, true, true
I no fit wash you

This one no be wash
When your laughter departs
Your smiles drift away
My heart is vacant
Like a school theatre
When souls clutching books
Depart
Lights dim
Seats lonely
Dust floats
On boards
Embossed with chalks of silence
So I gaze to bottomless pits
Clusters of empyrean full moons
Focused slides under microscopes
To magnify holes I hid
All the wash I dey give
Because here Nafeesa
Is sipping poerty
And the earth is tilting
A little to the right
To contain all her smiles
Broader aboard the left cheek
Caressing her eyelids

My lines click a snapshot:
She teaches me boundaries
Between dem truth and dem wash
But even petals of flowers
Will blush rosy when they hear
Drizzling truths of my heartbeat
To wash na just to make noise

Please do not trust me!
I can write of slim
Torso
Flashy eyes
Carved rose of your lashes
Erect dancing tresses
Charming lips
O! You fruit of the valley
Contours of waters of paradise
I no fit wash you

Let me weave and entwine
Halo truths
Of my glitzy poem
Through my burning voice
Forever singing
Cascades of a dazzled
Beauty
Before you pause me
To say
Na wash I dey wash you

I want to confess
without remorse nor
Shame
My slimy treason
But my tongue lolls
And battles my throat
Then my half tooth
Yes! I am guilty
Today I go wash you
In scents of Arabian poetry

The author Sada Malumfashi is a writer living in Kaduna, Nigeria. His works have appeared in The Deepwater Literary Journal, Bombay Review and Jalada Africa. He participated in the Ake Arts and Book Festival Creative Writing Workshop 2015.

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Poetry from Christopher Bernard

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Gratuitous piece of poetry from a regular contributor, posted today in preparation for the upcoming January issue, which goes live at midnight PST tonight. Please enjoy!

Last Day of 2015

By Christopher Bernard

As in any other year
each day the sun rose, it set.
Mothers, friends, partners, lovers,
after laughing at us for longer than we cared to remember,
vanished overnight.
Where they used to be now is a hole in the air.

The monarch butterflies move in mists of wings
across the plains between Canada and Mexico,
rain takes a stroll across parched California,
and the moon glows down on everything on the earth.

The snow lines the pockets of the mountains with rebukes
as sharp as memories of kitchens on winter mornings.
A crocus breaks through the whiteness, a small pink fist,
sleek as rebellion, calm, deceptively delicate,

wagging in the wind.

Your partner is ice, hollyhocks, poppies.

Your lover is a fox hiding under a felled cedar.

Your mother is the wind.

Every day the sun set, it rose.

_____

Christopher Bernard is author of The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs. His poetry can be read at The Bog of St. Philinte.

Poetry from Joan Beebe

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A CHRISTMAS SNOWFALL

We who live in northern climes

Begin to wonder if there will be

Snow for Christmas.

The trees are stark against the sky

But there are twinkling lights

Lighting up neighborhoods

With such delight for all to see.

Christmas Eve comes and still no snow

Late at night, we look out our window

And are given a beautiful surprise.

The snow is swirling with the wind

And making unique and lovely patterns

Upon window panes

We open our door and watch in awe

The beauty of the scene before us

That nature provided on this

Quiet and Holy Christmas Eve.

Interview with Etsy jewelry artist Sebastian Lokason

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This is an interview with Sebastian Lokason, jewelry artist and craftsperson with a full-time business on Etsy where he earns his living by designing and creating various pieces inspired by his faith. He talks about the life and practice of being an artist and a business person, how to integrate work, life, creativity and personal values, and the value and beauty of pieces with genuine stones.

Sebastian’s website and Etsy link: 

Some of Sebastian’s work:
How did you scale up your business over the years? Plenty of people start off making and selling crafts, how do you go from a hobby to a business? (i.e. finding customers, managing your time, making sure you’re getting enough of a profit margin, etc) 

I started beading in my early twenties, and people would comment on my jewelry and I would make stuff for admirers at a very low price – much lower than what I should have been charging, but back then I didn’t know what a fair price was and I was happy to get any “extra” money at all.  I started on Etsy in 2011, when I was thirty-one, as a hobbyist seller.  I had literally no idea how to market my items – for example, I didn’t know you’re supposed to use tags on Etsy so people can find things – and I also had very, very few items ready for sale.  I made less than a dozen sales prior to August 2014, which is when I got serious about Etsy and re-evaluated my business strategy, with help from someone who knows more about how to sell things than I do.  I found a customer base through blogging about Pagan spirituality, though the time eventually came where I had to choose between blogging and crafting, and I was lucky that people who found my store via my blog mostly stuck around after I stopped making content posts – perhaps in part because my message was “be authentic to yourself, and your Higher Purpose is what you love”, and by focusing my attention on my art I was doing just that.

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Synchronized Chaos December 2015: The Individual in Relief

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Welcome readers to December 2015’s edition of Synchronized Chaos Magazine. This month’s contributors deal with questions related to the individual’s connection to and responsibility toward the larger human or planetary universe.

Recurring contributor Tony GlamorTramp LeTigre speculates on the social order that could emerge if people used personal safety rather than traffic signals as a guide for when to cross the street. He reassures readers that his piece is a metaphor while raising deeper questions about alternatives to blind obedience. In another piece he celebrates compassion among neighbors, as he relates the tale of an old woman who goes by ‘TwoTooth Marie.” Tony also gives us a few poems, including a gentle piece about pumpkins and a short essay about exploring and feeling out of place in a wealthy Oregon hillside neighborhood, illustrating how alienated we can feel even when surrounded by others. His piece provokes thought about implicit versus explicit forms of social exclusion.

Rick Hartwell’s poetry also articulates the costs of invisibility and alienation within a social environment, as an individual falls through the cracks unnoticed to commit an inexplicable violent act. His other pieces present an aging speaker still questing for purpose in life and a dying ship sinking into oblivion.

Neil Ellman sends poetry designed to accompany paintings from Chilean artist Roberto Matta Echaurren that probe the nature of the self, the ego, and the creative mind. (For more information about this artist, who was a leading figure in surrealism and abstract expressionism, you may click here). Or here for Roberto Matta’s page on Artsy.net showcasing his work.

Elizabeth Hughes reviews a set of novels in her monthly Book Periscope column that grapple with loyalty and independence. Hannah in Adina Sara’s Blind Shady Bend finally lives for herself and sets up a new and unexpected life in the California gold country and finds connection to others along the way. Most of an entire family throws off selfishness and dysfunction and learns to come together and use their creativity and gifts for good to help heal a sick teenager in Rea Nolan Martin’s The Anesthesia Game. Through helping Syd, they discover other ways they can make choices that enhance their own lives. In Joy Brown Coates’ Integrity: An Obsidian Guardian Novel, Audra and her guardian Castile find each other and realize their mutual roles in a shared destiny while both try to hide from past failure.

Charles Markee’s Maria’s Beads presents a very young woman who must defy the adults in her life to save her dying best friend. In her case, her loyalty motivates her independence. In Jennifer Ott’s Desperate Moon, a medical researcher and natural philosopher’s rational approach to life leads him to see a female vampire as a natural living creature rather than an esoteric monster, which leads to a truly loving relationship. The novel shows her growing openness to mutual friendship and respect after a lifetime of survival through seeking power and protection.

Regular contributor Christopher Bernard reviews Cal Performances’ production of the Rude Mechs’ show Stop Hitting Yourself, which suggests through humor and physical energy the possibility of honoring both the values of individualism and charity, freedom and morality. Bernard also highlights his individual responsibility for the effect he has on the climate of planet Earth and evocatively honors the survivors and the departed from the recent attacks on Paris. Dami Lare, from Nigeria, also sends an abstract intellectual essay elucidating the limits of both dogmatic faith in religious or political systems and of atheism and skepticism. Lare does not entirely discourage readers from adopting big picture value systems, but reminds people not to use their chosen system as a prophylactic against rational thought.

Returning poet Michael Robinson speaks of the comfort he finds in times of pain and loneliness from his mother’s memory and from his spiritual faith. He also adds an older work of his to this issue, inspired by the suffering of inner city and refugee children and advocating compassion. Kimberly Brown reviews Linda Baron-Katz’ memoir Surviving Mental Illness: My Story and her children’s book Peter and Lisa, highlighting the strength the author showed in creating a meaningful and workable life for herself with bipolar syndrome and also how Linda’s reaching out to doctors, therapists, family and friends made her journey possible. One can and must be strong to survive, but one need not find that strength alone.

Shelby Stephenson contributes an alternative review of Roald Hoffman’s play Something that Belongs to Me consisting of conversation and excerpted dialogue from the production. The show, and this style of commentary upon it, posits individual people against a backdrop of large scale historical atrocities and the perennial dueling kindness and cruelty within our nature.

Finally, Joan Beebe’s poetry celebrates Christmas traditions: carols, nativity scenes, church services, presents, snow, sleds, children and families together. At its core the Christmas story in the Christian faith depicts an individual in relief: the incarnate Christ within an ordinary universe of people, plants and animals.

We encourage you to read this issue and see where you fit amid the backdrop of these contributors and their pieces. We wish you well and thank you for including our publication in however you choose to mark this season.

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=17409&picture=face-relief-in-marble

Public domain image from Marina Shemesh. Viewable and usable free here: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=17409

 

Short story from Tony Glamortramp LeTigre

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​As it Ought to Be


by t0ny glam0rtramp
TwoTooth Marie was an old woman of the street who was missing one of her two biggest upper teeth and one of her two biggest lower teeth, so that was why she got the name TwoTooth Marie. She was wandering around Japantown in San Francisco one cold November night, when the fog had rolled in & refused to roll back out. After being rudely honked & yelled at by a bully in an SUV at the corner of Post & Webster, Marie became petulant with her destitute situation & tired of pushing her ever-full shopping cart with its rusty wheels up & down the endless sidewalks. She rolled a smoke & hung out near the entrance of a swanky condo development, & tailed the next resident into the building, lugging her rolled-up sleepingbag discreetly inside a white garbage bag, ​plus another big bag containing everything she would need for the night.
​​
Her shopping cart she had already stowed earlier inside a storage space in the basement garage complex​, to reclaim later. Once inside, she ignored the resident’s pu​zzled​ glance & made a beeline for the elevator, which she immediately took to the top floor, which was the 4th.She roame​d the 4th floor hallway until she found the exit stair & took it UP to the secret landing & the door leading onto the roof.
​There, on the roof​, she found a cozy space beneath a network of air viaducts & utility structures, where she ​could unfurl​ her red flannel ​-​ clad sleepingbag & ​sequester herself, ​protected from view about 75% of the way. Only one or two windows possibly had a partial view of her hiding spot, or any resident who came up to the roof to smoke & strode about in her vicinity. But only once the entire first night she was up there did Marie hear anyone else open one of the two roof doors, & nothing came of it.

 

But after Three Nights, TwoTooth Marie was immured in her secret spot, putting the finishing touches to a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, when she heard a door open, & the sound of voices, followed by the step of shoes upon roof gravel. It happened to be Thanksgiving night. Marie froze, fearing the worst.

​An​ array of fight or flight options rapid -​ fired through her mind at the semisubconscious level. They’d found her! It was the asian fellow who had stared at her suspiciously earlier that afternoon when she’d come in, she was sure of it. But how crappy to be evicted on the very night of the holiday! Why had she been foolish & chosen to spend Thankgsiving in Japantown instead of Snoe Valley?
​*

Hopefully they would just ask her to gather up her things & escort her out. Don’t bring the cops into this!

“We know you’re under there,” said a male voice, authoritative. “Come on out now.”

“We can’t let you stay up here by yourself all night,” added the voice of a woman: his companion.

“Come on down & eat, we’ve got a plate of food all ready for you!” added a third voice: that of a child—perky, congenial.

In the midst of hastily gathering together her parcels, Marie froze in renewed wonder & peered out at her presumed assailants. “What?” she exclamasked* in a voice like cracked concrete.

“Marie, you heard us,” the man continued, yet more stridently. “Come out from there… & come downstairs & have dinner with us!”

His wife, beside him, laughed. “That’s right! We’re not going to have you wasting away alone in the cold on Thanksgiving night! What kind of people would we be to show no concern for our fellow suffering human beings on this special day?”

Pleasantly flabbergasted, nearly killed with kindness, Marie peered from beneath the viaduct beneath which lay her sleepingbag, eyed them for a moment suspiciously to make sure they weren’t still trying to entrap her; decided their magnanimity was genuine, & crept out to join them. “That’s so nice of you!” she cried, before she’d even seen what awaited her on the dinner table below.

It was a feast fit for homeless queen. And that’s exactly how Marie was treated all that evening & straight on through til next morning. When she had eaten all she could hold, still they tried to push more on her; though she drained her mead glass a half dozen times, still they filled it again; & at last, at the end of the night, the children of the kind couple escorted Marie to their guest room—normally the nursery, but mom & dad moved the baby in with them for the night.

After all, what kind of people would be be if we showed ​no​ concern for our fellow, suffering humans?

+61+

28 November 2015
​

NOTES:

*Snoe (Snowy) Valley: because like other once-vital San Francisco neighborhoods, it’s mostly affluent white property owners now​.
​
*
​*​
exclamasked: (neologism) exclaimed + asked

​

Poetry from Tony Glamortramp LeTigre

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very short poem for the holidays 2015
by tony glammortrampp

i love white pumpkins
rotund in their ivory splendor
like the moon, plus cream & honey

nonsociability

through the tourists in the square
I move like a surly badger
startling a flock of pigeons

Artwork from Tony Glamortramp LeTigre

Artwork from Tony Glamortramp LeTigr