Donna Walker-Nixon, from Volume 4:2

Donna Walker-Nixon was a full professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where she received the distinction of receiving the Mary Stevens Piper award for excellence in teaching. She currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at Baylor. She lists her five primary professional achievements as 1) founding Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature in 1997, 2) co-editing the Her Texas series with her friend and mentor James Ward Lee, 3) co-founding The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas 4) publishing her novel Canaan's Oothoon, and 5) serving as lead editor Her Texas, which has jettisoned Donna's faith that the voices of women writers and artists truly mean something to both men and women.

Walker-Nixon contributed her short story "And They Danced" to Volume 4:2. Below is an excerpt:

     Another August, Mr. Ferrill veered Mrs. Joiner's lime-green Dr. Pepper station wagon onto a shadowy gravel path where the Barnetts used to live. Louis Barnett rode the bus with Lizzie, and her oily hair stuck out like strikes of lightening. Mr. Ferrill cut off the engine next to the mustang grape vines where her grandmother took them to pluck fruit that stained their fingers and clothes and caused their hands to itch. Few people ventured onto this abandoned dead-end path. He thrust his lizard tongue between her teeth, and he complained her braces interrupted his sordid pleasures. He whined about his dead first wife, “Willie never understood me. Not a true wife ordained by God.” With his webbed fingers, he pawed at her developing pubic hair until he wrangled her clitoris like a cowboy does a wild horse. Against her will, she breathed in and out. “You want me. I know you do.”

     He pushed her spine into the passenger side of the Dr. Pepper station wagon. Only because his webbed fingers left him unable to control her completely was she able to pry open the door. She tumbled onto the ripe grapes and a sticker bush. The grapes stained her beige blouse, and the bush entangled her legs. She struggled and pulled herself free, but she took no notice of the blood beading in clots on her skinned calves. The hot summer breeze normally would have stifled her breathing. “I must escape,” she chanted as she paced back to Old Decatur Road and past the red brick house where Karen,  her first best friend forever, lived. She stumbled by the Putnam place where in second grade the old man's fierce dogs chased her back to Karen's house.

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Read Walker-Nixon's beautiful tale in full today and open Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 4:2!

Darren C. Demaree, from Volume 4:2

Darren C. Demaree's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.

He is the author of "As We Refer To Our Bodies" (2013, 8th House), "Temporary Champions" (2014, Main Street Rag), "The Pony Governor" (2015, After the Pause Press), and "Not For Art Nor Prayer" (2015, 8th House).  He is also the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Demaree contributed two poems — "Emily as What the Blue Tells" and "Emily as Apple Milk" — to Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 4:2.  Below is an excerpt from the latter:

There is a bit of Emily

tucked behind each morning.

It's a slight pressure

that brings me to the foot

of our beds before the dogs

wake up to join us there

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Open Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 4:2 today to read Demaree's work in full!

Lloyd Milburn, from Volume 4:2

Lloyd Milburn has taught composition and creative writing for over fifteen years in the Rochester, New York area. He earned an MA in English/creative writing with poet William Heyen’s advisement. In addition to having work published in Permafrost, Willow Review, Ithaca Lit, The Sandy River Review, and Talking River Review, he is currently nearing completion of his first two books of poetry. His lifelong love for music and a personal interest in synesthesia inform his writing, and he has lectured on the subject at RIT where he designed and taught the course "Synesthesia and Music."

Milburn contributed two poems — "Chromonema Music" and "At Half Staff" — to Volume 4:2. Below is an excerpt from the former:

That's why clips of Judy Garland still pull

at certain strings, like my zither's highest wires

always out of tune with the fat ones,

but the high strings were impossible to adjust,

the frame not strong enough to hold them.

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Check out Milburn's work in full today in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 4:2!

Haven Blue and Tom Darin Liskey, from Volume 4:2

Haven Blue is a freelance artist and illustrator usually living somewhere on some western coast. She grew up making things and was often occupied arranging spaces and objects to find different perspectives. Her primary visual focus has been illustrative painting and sculpture, but she engages in various modes and media including movement exhibitions and contemporary tattooing. She has illustrated for children's books and curriculums and her work has appeared in exhibitions at the Boehm Gallery in San Marcos, CA and the Baron Gallery in Ocean Beach, CA.

Blue created the front and back cover art for Volume 4:2. Below is "The Colour White," the piece featured on the front cover:

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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 fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Crime Factory, Driftwood Press, Mount Island, The Burnside Writers Collective, Sassafras Literary Magazine, and Biostories, among others. His photographs have been published in Hobo Camp Review, Roadside Fiction, Blue Hour Magazine, Synesthesia Literary Journal, and Midwestern Gothic. He lives in Texas where he tells his children that he has done worse things for less money.

Liskey had a photo essay of Quito, Ecuador run in Volume 4:2, with individual photos appearing on pages 6, 9, 16, 20, 23, 26, 29, 40, 43, 46, and 55. Below is the first photo in the essay, appearing on page 6:

 

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Check out all of Blue and Liskey's work in the new volume of Synesthesia today!