Alejandro Juárez Crawford, from Volume 2:1

Alejandro Juárez Crawford has performed his serial poems at Galapagos Arts Space, the Blue Note, SOBs, and the Bowery Poetry Club, and has published them in Streetnotes and Stonefence. He regularly contributes opinion pieces for US News & World Report's Economic Intelligence blog, is a senior consultant with Acceleration Group, and teaches at both the New School, Baruch College of the City University of New York and the Fashion Institute of Technology.

In his own words, Crawford's serial poem "Leaning Music" is "a kind of 'poem of education,' if I may put it that way, education in those rhythms of existence that run counter to the dominant ones set by traffic lights and lunch breaks, conference calls and dinner dates."
  
                    Learn the song quickly
                      so it forms a million rhythms
                    that converge   and then depart,
                      but enter   the nature
                        of each other:
                      and because   they have created each other
                    do not fail
                        to reconvene.

                                       ...

                      Do you ever forget a night
                    walking through the belted constellations
                      of the supermarket aisle...


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 To read Crawford's extraordinary poem in its entirety, navigate through Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:1!

Olivier Bochettaz and Marie Lecrivain, from Volume 2:1

Born in the French Alps, Olivier Bochettaz recently migrated to Long Beach in order to join the local community of poets at the M.F.A. in poetry program at the California State University. His poetry can be found in RipRap, Cadence Collective and Remedial Art, and his critical works in DUMAS Archives.

His poem in Volume 2:1, "Telluric Symphony", is a naturalist's dream come true.

          there in a green mild bushy bower

                filled with resinous buds and sleepy flowers

                      is a crossway-inn for blue birds

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Marie Lecrivain is a photographer, writer, and the editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles. She is also the editor of several anthologies, including Sybaritic Press's upcoming Near Kin: Words and Art Inspired by Octavia E. Butler.

Her poem in Volume 2:1, "In the Shadow of Gary Numan, High Priest of the X-Gens", is a narrative of nostalgia that maintains intense immediacy. If you're an X-Gen, it's sure to take you back.

          We are golems who wish to shed our status quo and pogo like we
          used to.

                                                             ...

          We become what we once were, the bastard generation who danced
          in the hinterlands of the cold war. We become our own mythology.

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Take a look inside Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:1 to read Olivier's and Marie's poems in full!

Marta Rodríguez Iborra and Janice D. Soderling, from Volume 2:1

Marta Rodríguez Iborra, writing out of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she currently combines a position at the Graduate School with doctoral research on women's modern autobiographical literature, ushers in one of life's purposes in her poem "It":

                    you are not born to dig holes
                    but to oar in foreign seas

Find her writing on her blog at Anatomía de la Intimidad.

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"At the border there were sycamore and sassafras, broad oaks that were at least a hundred years old, and hazel with sharply forked branches like dowsers used to find water."

The above quotation is taken from "Red Earth" by Janice D. Soderling who has two flash fictions in Synesthesia Volume 2:1. The second story (or is it a story?), "The Stonefish: Intelligent Protection Strategies and Natural Selection", appears on page 32. Soderling has published fiction, poetry, and translations in many international journals. She lives and writes in Sweden.

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These brief excerpts do not do justice to Iborra and Soderling. See for yourself in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:1!

A. Maureen Tant, from Volume 2:1

"Can we forget what we already know?" is the question posed by Miss Tant at the opening of her fascinating essay "In History/We Could Have". Tant, with the help of Tom Stoppard and Barton Smock, takes us through a whirlwind of poignant statements regarding our relationship to human history and memory, my favorite of which is "Humanity renders nothing indelible, meaning it also never experiences catharsis."

In the current volume (2:1) Tant has another rapturous essay, "Releasing Comfort", as well as a book-review-turned-obituary for her friend, the late, great Ned Vizzini.

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A. Maureen Tant, currently pursuing a master's degree in linguistics from University College Dublin, suggests you read everything by Jean Baudrillard and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Find her on twitter - @jucebrenner - and/or meandering around the streets of New York City this summer.

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This brief excerpt and introduction does not do Tant justice. See for yourself in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:1!

Ken Wagner and J. Ryan Bermuda, from Volume 2:1

Ken Wagner is a  poet hailing from Seattle, Washington who also works as a volunteer poetry teacher. He has studied under David Wagoner for the last three years. Wagner's poetry is intimate, illuminating, and sonorous.

from "How I Heard It"

                    my Aunt was mad at everyone she didn't know

                    especially if they weren't Roman Catholic

                                                        ...                        

                              there were ten cans of frozen grapefruit juice

                              in her freezer   enough to poison the whole family

  

                                   *                    *                    *   

from "Blame Rain"

                    Coltrane would surround

                    the rain

                    with sheets of sound to placate the trees        

           

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J. Ryan Bermuda resides in Redlands, California. His experiences as a foster parent have inspired his upcoming poetry manuscript From Hell to Breakfast. Bermuda's poetry contains imagery so striking that it practically leaves the mind reeling.

from "Wolf Peach"

                    They carried brass

                    Zippos before knowing the risks

                                   the universe is

                                              expanding

                                   ...

                    bike seat vinyl powdered

                    and frayed exposing bisque yellow foam 

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These brief excerpts do not do justice to Wagner and Bermuda. See for yourself in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:1!