Sharif Shakhshir, from Volume 2:2

Sharif Shakhshir is a Southern California native who suffers from an extreme case of Californication.  A hopeful screenwriter, novelist, poet, cartoonist, princess, butterfly, astronaut; he got his masters at the now stab-murdered Masters of Professional Writing program at USC which emphasized adaptability between writing forms. Sharif tends to pull together disparate ideas and make them play in the same sandbox together; usually, they play My Little Pony: Special Victims Unit. Sharif is unemployed, overweight, a person of color, a Hollywood cliché, and an intellectual. Given this combination, it is no surprise that loneliness is a prominent theme in Shakhshir’s work. Said work can be seen in other publications like The East Jasmine Review, Perceptions Magazine of the Arts, and Writing That Risks.  He is also on Twitter @Sharif12

Sharif contributed the longest piece published in Synesthesia to date, a story titled "The First Canine Uprising." Below is an excerpt.

Congregation

Once there was a boy who liked cats. This is the story about his dog. On the top of the hills behind Azusa, more than 200 canines are gathered to see this dog named “Roxie.” She is a mutt, white and mid-tone with black spots on her face, muzzle, and paws as if she had lost a fight with a fountain pen. Like many military leaders speaking to their troops before they die, she barks about freedom and tomorrows. The dogs are volunteer soldiers for her insurgency against human supremacy.
Spit falls to the soil at Roxie’s paws during the climax of her speech. She howls to the blackness of a new moon. Her congregation howls along under a giant white cross, their chorus echoing over a cliff down to the city lights below. They howl on the park benches tattooed with bad graffiti. They howl from the bushes littered with spent lighters and cigarette butts. They howl from the bottom of the westward sloping hill which makes a natural stage for the canine insurgents to see their leader.

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To read Shakhshir's tour de force in full, open up Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2.