Gamboling on a Fixed Deck

flexor bets
a paradiddle conundrum
no wallet left
for reflex

a
datum (Latin teacher
breach what is: seizures

a tendon cleft above rapprochement

*

slender beginnings deftly ended
while wending the garden sway
among
past sunset drumming
circles
taking other shape

geometry serves a retrospective vindication

*

technical specimen pastimes
at the rages grating guidance
restore
the perch meant
to cavern the evening
sustenance

an
arrangement elixir tonic osage passage
defrayed no rubato seeping chronic
encore retention
prefix

a matter of glucose wandering its own pattern

*

no angle left
to play the trump card a script
running according

a
rerun’s in Haiti canteen
rebirth
or off to the echoplex

no honest mirror left to reflect i(o)n

but
always a joker
to play

a dead hand

Continue reading →

Snow Flurries

By Leticia Garcia Bradford

On a trip to Pyeongtaek, South Korea, visiting my grandchildren and daughter for the winter holidays comes this blog story:

It came upon a winter’s day. Snow! My first snow living in snow country. The billowy flakes blew around in pillowy drifts. With so much excitement, I felt like a kid on my first adventure in the snow. Being warm inside the house watching the flurries like tiny popcorn float down and cover everything in white is one thing. Heading out in the cold is another. Bundling up to go outside to play is a process of patience.

On the first day, Miranda, Baby Nathaniel and I went for a snow walk. The excitement of my first snow was so refreshing: breathing in the cold air and exhaling frost mist. When Aurora and Francesca came home from preschool, Nate and I stayed inside protected from the cold, while the girls played in the snow wearing their mittens, snow bibs, jackets, hats and scarves. I watched from the window with warmth in my heart, witnessing mother and daughters joyously playing in the cold snow.

On the second day, two adults, two toddlers and one baby ventured outside for a snow picnic. The bundling process again and I’m always the last one ready. The girls were on an adventure to find snow beans. Lola, my grandma name, carried the snow food and a bulky canister of holiday popcorn. The Korean Cultural Center was a short distance down the country road and we walked along frozen and melting snow through the neighborhood with houses scattered amongst frozen rice paddies.

Everywhere you looked was draped in white. At the Center, we set up under an awning with our blanket. The snow beans, a bag of holiday mint M & M’s, were found after mom had flung them over the previously green lawn and we ate our picnic snacks. No one sat down because of the cold and because of the lure of expansive snow available to make fresh tracks: Irresistible! I couldn’t stop running around and trying to make snow hearts with my boots. The Center had holiday music playing and I couldn’t have been happier dancing in the snow while the tiny flakes descended upon my face. After gleaning the perfect icicle, I was surprised to find the icy treat was sharp where I pierced my tongue.

“Could this be the perfect murder weapon?” That was my daughter’s input.

While the exhilaration of my first snow was rejuvenating, snow excitement runs it’s course. First, the snow gets dirty and melts into black ice which makes walking difficult because of the fear of finding my rump in a heap of snow or worse in a puddle of muddy freezing water. Then, as the snowing stops it starts to melt making even more mud. The next day, when the sun had come out I began to wonder if the snow had all been a dream, with little reminders of the fun we’d had the day before.

No worries for me. I’m in South Korea until January and the hope that I’ll get my first White Christmas will be a dream come true.

Leticia Garcia Bradford performs around the SF East Bay at open mics and readings. She finds herself a poet, a playwright and a pharmacy techinician. She is the founder of the B Street Writers Collective in Hayward, CA. To find out if she got her White Christmas check out her My New Adventure Blog at leticiagarciabradford.blogspot.com. Leticia’s Blog at lgbradford.blogspot.com has her poems and other stories.

Welcome to a fresh year that hopefully brings a clean slate and invigorating creative possibilities to all of you in the reading audience. This month we take a cue from the dancers in Jess Curtis’ new show Gravity and examine what lies at the edges of our peripheral vision, and also what sits directly in front of us.

The dance show, performed at San Francisco’s Grand Theater, a space for conceptual and experimental art, drew upon audience reactions and interactions to shape the performance. Whether directly by invitation, or in ways the troupe revealed after certain segments, the performers relied upon viewer engagement and participation to determine the length and energy of their pieces. In one scene they intentionally sought to stay in viewers’ peripheral vision, raising questions about who we choose to see and how we decide to acknowledge their existence.

Returning poet Michael Robinson describes a love built on mutual understanding and kindness that begins with a first look, with his speaker and his partner meeting each other’s glance on a bus. Christopher Bernard, recurrent writer and critic, reviews a new volume from writer Eunice Odio, a poet determined to assert her physical and intellectual existence, to stay right front and center in their line of sight.

Former teacher Caleb Cheung’s talk on new directions in modern American science education, given at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA and reviewed by Cristina Deptula, begins with an audience-participation experiment simple enough for a child to carry out but more complex than it looks. Full understanding of the physical setup, which still eludes professional scientists, involves mathematical modeling and integration of different fields of science.

Jewelry artist Sebastian Lokason describes the reasoning behind how he runs his online store, going in depth into the process of turning a hobby inspired by his faith into a means of earning a living. As with the science demonstration, much more thought and planning has gone into fashioning and marketing his finely crafted pieces honoring Thor, Loki and other deities than would be apparent at first glance.

Returning essayist Ayokunle Adeleye encourages readers in his home country of Nigeria to look beyond their pre-conceived ideas about what constitutes a distinguished career and consider the need for and the value of classroom teaching as an occupation.

Ryan Hodge, in his Play/Write column, also goes beyond preconceived ideas about the roles of women and gives examples of female characters in video games that are neither weak and without agency nor merely replicas of the male characters. It’s possible to conceive of roles that are complementary and unique for these fictional women that go beyond the helpless ‘princess in need of rescue’ but also don’t take stereotypical maleness as a default, don’t assume that a female has to be masculine in order to be strong.

Joan Beebe writes of a snowfall on America’s East Coast, surprising the neighborhood with its peace and beauty. She also describes the nostalgia and fun of a New Year’s Eve celebration, capturing life in front of our eyes with grace. Poet Sada Malumfashi brings us lush wordy mixes celebrating the richness of poetic creation, youthful crushes, and imagination.

Returning poet Tony Glamortramp LeTigre humanizes characters many of us criticize, misunderstand, ignore, or keep on the periphery of our vision in his piece about several offbeat homeless men sharing a short-lived temporary home. In another piece he illustrates the fleeting, but intense moment of watching a loud, noisy train pass.

And Elizabeth Hughes thanks all the authors and the literary community for sending books and making her regular Book Periscope column possible. 

We hope that January’s issue of Synchronized Chaos brings you the same thoughtful sensation of ecstasy as you savor these submissions.

Public domain image from Linnaea Mallette