Welcome, readers, to June’s issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine. This month welcomes a cast of contributors who probe the boundaries between their surroundings and their imagination, between what is and what they fancy, dream, hope or fear could be.
Diona Dorr’s short story presents a character who turns to violence when her vision of the perfect future is shattered. Cassandra Gauthier’s poem laments the milestones her speaker’s troubled grandfather could have shared with her.
Chika Onyenezi’s poetry collection begins with a subconscious nightmare, then moves to a surrealistic celebration of married love and teenage romance.
Donal Mahoney describes the process of submitting one’s creative writing to literary magazines decades ago before the word processor or the Internet. He’s nostalgic for old-fashioned courtesy, but not for piles of self-addressed stamped envelopes!
Joan Beebe’s poetry also conveys sweet remembrances of the days of the friendly milkman and ragman. She also reminds us that there are different kinds of families and that those of us with loving, close ones should appreciate them.
H.R. Creel’s poetry portrays a man at the top of his world in his imagination in a Walter Mitty-esque fantasy during his ordinary home life. Angelica Fuse comments on identity, as her speakers assert who they are, work to find themselves, or simply can’t help being who they are.
Ridley Flock’s poem comments wistfully at the animal strength which humans had in our evolutionary heritage and perhaps psychological memory. J.D. DeHart’s work takes the animal concept farther, giving a series of vignettes where an ordinary office worker transforms into his animal namesake, a ram. As in Kafka’s short story ‘Metamorphosis,’ the change is playful and more notable to readers than to the people surrounding the protagonist.
Christopher Bernard reviews San Francisco’s Opera Parallele’s production of The Lighthouse, a modern opera that relates a dark tale of death at sea and also of the evil within humanity. The production seems to have skillfully combined the accessibility of more contemporary music and settings with the philosophical content and organization of traditional opera.
Patty Lesser’s novel The Perfect Hand illustrates how friendship and loyalty can empower people to hold onto their humanity and identities in a complex futuristic society with little individual freedom or privacy. Holly Sisson also reviews another of Patty Lesser’s novels, Devouring Time, in which the characters become more authentic over time and able to have genuinely caring relationships. The characters grow into better versions of themselves.
We hope this issue will inspire thoughts of creativity and fancy within the real world where we all find ourselves.
Kaleidoscope design from Lode Van de Velde
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