Anjeanette, Liskey, and Reynolds, from Volume 3:1

Anjeanette knew since about 5 years old that she wanted to be an artist. She grew up traveling the USA, and decided to never grow up and keep traveling. Her preferred mediums are Charcoal, Oil & Acrylic paints and Digital paintings and photography. She was educated at the Savannah College of Art and Design, graduating in 1999 with a BFA in Illustration, Magna Cum Laude. She has shown in several solo and group fine art gallery exhibitions in Houston, Texas, Detroit and Lansing, Michigan, and all over Tennessee. She was featured in a 6-page interview in Corel Painter Magazine, as well as several other small features in various publications.

Anjeanette provided her piece "Luce" for the front and back cover art of Volume 3:1.

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Tom Darin Liskey spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His first collection of stories, This Side of The River, was released in 2014. His photographs have been published in Roadside Fiction, Blue Hour Magazine and Midwestern Gothic. He lives in Texas.

Liskey's "Anjo" appears on page 7 of Volume 3:1.

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Ruth Ann Reynolds is a Northern California Native who takes the word GirlScout to a deeper level. Trained in Emergency Medicine, she knows how to “seize the moment” and capture images that are typically lost due to overthinking the shot. She’s lived in the Pacific Northwest for the past 20 years. Recently, she was a finalist in Oregon ArtBeats #OregonMoment contest. Her image was shown at the prestigious Blue Sky Photography Gallery in Portland in 2014. She’s relocating to Houston, Texas where she will be pursuing her lifelong dream in Cardiac ultrasound.


Reynolds' untitled landscape image appears on page 34 of Volume 3:1.

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Flip through Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to see another 6 pieces of visual art by Anjeanette, Linskey, and Reynolds!

Diane Gage, from Volume 3:1

A San Diego-based poet and artist, Diane Gage's work appeared recently in Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming (2013). A selection of her Moon Haiku will appear later this year in a series of artist books by members of San Diego Book Arts. Gage was recently featured and interviewed at Blue Vortext Publishers.

Gage contribued two poems— "Picasso's Loaves" and "Bride Bared by Bird Bachelors"—in Volume 3:1. Below is an excerpt from the former:

His dark eyes focus

out the window, looking

toward the light source,

corners of his mouth

lifting slightly—maybe a whisper
of Giaconda in the lips?

Picasso and the Loaves by Robert Doisneau

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To read Gage's poems in full, flip to pages 38-40 in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1!

Alan Britt, from Volume 3:1

Alan Britt served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. A new interview for Lake City Lights is available at http://lakecitypoets.com/AlanBritt.html. His latest books are Lost Among the Hours, Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli), and Alone with the Terrible Universe. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

Alan had two poems —"Optical Illusion" and "Garden of Earthly Delights"— published in Volume 3:1. Below is an excerpt from the latter:

Those mysterious ergot dots sometimes appearing as beautiful monsters in Bosch paintings . . . Hieronymus, wild man of Western art, early surreal genius signaling
Goya, Dalí, Tanguy and Bacon. There’s a strange excitement upon entering Bosch  
. . . entering the brain of a beautiful heretic . . . almost like entering a house you’ve
lived in for 100 years, but suddenly rooms take on a fresh perspective, friends
devouring the fabric of sanity, dripping acid on the upper brain (despite God’s
pleadings)

The Garden of Eden by Jan the Elder Brueghel

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To read both of Alan's brilliantly orante pieces, flip to page 35 of Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1.

Jacqueline Sheehan, from Volume 3:1

Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist. She is also a psychologist. She is a New Englander through and through, but spent twenty years living in the western states of Oregon, California, and New Mexico doing a variety of things, including house painting, freelance photography, newspaper writing, clerking in a health food store, and directing a traveling troupe of high school puppeteers.

Her first novel, Truth, was published in 2003 by Free Press of Simon and Schuster. Her second novel, Lost & Found, was published in 2007 by Avon, Harper Collins. Lost & Found has been on the New York Times Bestseller List and has been optioned for film by Katherine Heigl, star of Grey's Anatomy.

In Volume 3:1, Sheehan contributed an excerpt from Lost & Found that concerns a woman named Tess who has, of all things, synesthesia. Below is an excerpt:

Tess did not regret for one minute the uniqueness of synesthesia, only that it took her so long to know its name and that she was not alone, that there were others. There were a few kindred spirits out in the world who were touched by the cross firing of senses, touched by the same tweak in genetics as Tess, and finding them had changed her life. As a child, she was driven to silence when she discovered that none of the other children saw numbers as colors. She would say, “The answer is number four, right next to the red three.” The second grade teacher tilted her head as if to hear her better and squinted her eyes trying to see her better. “No, Tess. We’re only doing the numbers now, not the colors.” In one horrible moment, built up from a few months of clues, Tess understood that her teacher and her classmates lived in a monochrome world where numbers were only black lines, sad lonely things. Piano notes did not brush against their cheeks and smell like cinnamon, and most odd of all, when they fell and scraped their knees, they did not shout, “It’s too orange, now red!” They cried of course, as she did but they could not see the pulse of the pain in great orange splats with a deep red core.

1913 painting by Wassily Kandinsky

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Open up Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to read Sheehan's entire excerpt!

J. M. Scoville, from Volume 3:1

Raised on the southern coast of Oregon, now residing in the backwoods of southern Louisiana, J. M. Scoville’s work has more recently appeared in storySouth, Ululations, Starfish Poetry, Edit Red, and Ditch Poetry. In 2002, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Presently, one of his poems is appearing inside a poetry box in downtown Covington, LA.

Scoville's poem "Regrets" appears on page 30 of Volume 3:1. Below is an excerpt: I always regret

that's being human, I said, regretting my confession, giving her a measure

of knowledge usually dispensed for me alone

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Flip through Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to read Scoville's poem in its entirety!

R. W. Haynes, from Volume 3:1

R. W. Haynes writes in South Texas, where he is frequently reminded of William Blake’s assertion: “Without Contraries is no progression.” He recently completed a novel and hopes that this year the Muses will help him finish his second book on the playwright Horton Foote.

This is Haynes' second appearance in Synesthesia, and his sonnet"The Wrong End of I-35" was published in Volume 3:1. Below is a preview:

I asked the writing teacher who can't write To write me a reference to eternal doom
And send it to the living from the tomb, But she just waved her checkbook in the light And laughed...

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Finish reading Haynes' sonnet on page 29 of Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1.

Terese Coe, from Volume 3:1

Terese Coe's poems and translations have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Poetry, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Huffington Post, Poetry Review, the TLS, Agenda, New Walk Magazine, Warwick Review, The Stinging Fly, and many other publications, including anthologies. One of her poems was heli-dropped across London in the 2012 London Olympics Rain of Poems, and she have a new collection of poems coming out in March 2015. She has received two grants from Giorno Poetry Systems, and she teaches college English in Manhattan.

Terese had two poems— "Sea Urchin" and "Inchoate" — published in Volume 3:1. Below is an excerpt from "Sea Urchin":

The sea urchin’s brain
has been overhyped

[...]

Only he can breathe 

through adhesive tubes 

that double as his feet,

and these may be found 

at the ends of spines

through which his toes can eat.

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Read "Sea Urchin" and Coe's other poem in full inside Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1!

C. C. Russell, from Volume 3:1

C. C. Russell currently lives in Casper, Wyoming with his wife, daughter, and two cats.  His poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Rattle, Hazmat Review, and Pearl, among others. He holds a BA in English from the University of Wyoming and has held jobs in a wide range of vocations – everything from graveyard shift convenience store clerk to retail management with stops along the way as dive bar DJ.  He has also lived in New York and Ohio.  His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for The Best Small Fictions.

Russell's poem "Skeletons of Sound" was published in Volume 3:1. Here's an excerpt:

You stand picturesque
among our histories.

I throw another syllable
to the canyon.

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Russell's poem appears on page 25 of Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1.

Kristopher D. Taylor, from Volume 3:1

Kristopher D. Taylor is a poet from Florida. He started Dink Press in 2014. His poetry has been featured in a number of magazines, including The Bitchin' Kitsch, The Show Me Doctrine, and Haiku Journal Issue #29. His chapbook A Sleep/less Night: A-Z is set to be released by Fowlpox Press. He is in love and can be reached at kristopherdtaylor@yahoo.com, or at kdtaylorisstillhere.wordpress.com, where he posts regularly.

Taylor has two poems—"one" and "two"—published in Volume 3:1. The following is an excerpt:

swimming in an ocean of foreshadow,

the professional dead man's

absurd theatrics

have gone unnoticed

[...]

for

who knows what socks

really go with that tie?

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To read Taylor's poems in full, sift through Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 today.

Nuța Istrate Gangan, from Volume 3:1

Nuța Istrate Gangan is an Romanian-American author living in Davie, Florida. Her poems are published both in Romanian and English, and her books are available online. Gangan's poetry is translated into English by Adrian George Sahlean.

Gangan had two poems—"still missing" and "our love"—published in Volume 3:1. Here's a sample from "still missing":

...I will always remain
a vague uneasiness.

some day
you will turn me
into a memory...

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Checkt out Nuța's startling work in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1.

Jennifer Clarke, from Volume 3:1

Raised in Orange, Jennifer Clarke spent her childhood on the varied landscapes of Southeast Texas. The performing and fine arts became her focus in youth and remain so today. She worked as a researcher and writer in the legal field for more than a decade until dedicating herself to education. Being a classroom teacher was one of the most rewarding and difficult positions she ever had, and it lead her to support education, justice, and community activism.

For Volume 3:1, Clarke contributed an original critical essay on Franz Kafka's The Trial titled "Abandoning Human: The Proliferation of Indifference in Kafka’s The Trial." Here's the abstract:

While this unfinished novel has been studied from several perspectives including religious and bureaucratic, a running thematic element throughout the novel is indifference. Kafka creates a world, through setting and his use of characterization that is murky and surreal. K. is arrested, condemned, and never truly heard, but then again, no indication of what he should be saying is clarified because his charges are never explained. K. stumbles through a labyrinth of confusing and debilitating processes and never gains insight into his own situation. Through the character of Joseph K., paralleled by a court system that is void of compassion, Kafka reveals that apathy infects humanity, and failure to actively reject indifference can bring about devastation. The author portrays the inhuman through images of disfigured characters, filth, and dehumanizing circumstances revealing the true nature of a failing humanity. Self-preservation and self-interest are the top priorities for many of the characters, and there are no qualms about using and even destroying others to secure the self; however the characters lack the most important aspect of self-preservation—self-reflection, and so no progress can truly be made. This aspect of human nature is not new, and has not changed. Kafka’s insights into the world around him during a very dark time in human history are perhaps depicted in this novel and are no less relevant today.

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Read Clarke's essay in full -- Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1

Joan Mazza, from Volume 3:1

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art. Visit her personal website at: www.JoanMazza.com

Mazza had one poem in Volume 3:1, the elegant "Dimes":

silver caterpillar, shiny worm, living metal,

hold memories of hands they’ve touched.

I stack them up, play Midas like a child...

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Read Mazza's poem in full on page 13 of Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1.

Stephen Page, from Volume 3:1

Stephen Page is from Detroit, Michigan. He is the author of The Timbre of Sand and Still Dandelions. His critical essays have appeared regularly in the Buenos Aires Herald and the Fox Chase Review. He is the recipient of The Jess Cloud Memorial Prize, a Writer-in-Residence from the Montana Artists Refuge, a Full Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, an Imagination Grant from Cleveland State University, and an Arvon Foundation Ltd. Grant. He loves his wife, traveling, his family, and friends.

Page's poem "My Re-edification" appears on page 12 of the new volume. Here's a snippet:

here, there is no Professor of Ranch
no Dean of Land.

my degrees hang up on an unviewed wall.

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Head over to Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to read Page's poem in its entirety.

J. L. Harlow, from Volume 3:1

Author of the poetry books, Dragonfly Island and Mosaic of Ashes, J.L. Harlow has now had poems published both in print and through online literary magazines such as White Ash, Fat City Review, Surrounded Magazine, and Riveter Review. In her spare time she enjoys creating art work, drinking coffee, reading and learning about cultures of all kinds, and searching the world for inspiration. Harlow is currently working on a novel. She hopes to inspire and be inspired throughout her future work.

From "Emblem of Silence" in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1:

Solace in silence, speech is an unwounded heart.

[...]

I have earned my medal of this hush:

A calming storm to lull me away.

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If you enjoyed the above snippet, navigate through Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to read Harlow's poem in full!

Rich Murphy, from Volume 3:1

Derek Walcott remarked thus on Rich Murphy’s poetry: “Mr. Murphy is a very careful craftsman in his work, a patient and testing intelligence, one of those writers who knows precisely what he wants his style to achieve. His poetry is quiet but packed, carefully wrought, not surrealistically wild, and its range not limited but deliberately narrow. It takes aim.”

Murphy has taught writing and literature at several colleges and universities. His books include Americana (2013), Voyeur (2008), and The Apple in the Monkey Tree (2007). He lives in Marblehead, MA.

Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 features two poems by Murphy – “Distant Destiny” and “Modern Author.” These pieces walk a fine line between timidity and wildness.

From “Modern Author”:

Ancestors built houses using

symbols available from the dead.

Today, the box owner maintains

the windowless prison cell

when so much emptiness invites

creativity.

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Head on over to Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 to read Murphy's work in full!

Una Nichols Hynum, from Volume 3:1

The poet laureate Billy Collins once called Una Nichols Hynum "the poet who made me wake up." Hynum was born in Providence, Rhode Island. A graduate of San Diego State University and a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, she has been published in Rattle, an island of egrets, A Year in Ink, San Diego Poetry Annual, Magee Park Anthology, and many poetry anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1 features three poems by Hynum: "Conversation, with Soul," "Alchemy," and "Haunting." Each piece dazzles, the language lush, terse, meditative.

From "Haunting":

The cemetery sits on a hill, crosses
stamped on the sky, round shouldered

clouds shuddering in the chill Santa Ana wind.

[...]

                                                           Hell
would be knowing, or living through something

again you cannot live through or die from.

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Read Hynum's amazing poems in full! Navigate over to Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1!