R. S. Gwynn, from Volume 2:2

R. S. Gwynn was born in Eden, North Carolina, in 1948. He attended Davidson College, where he played football, twice won the Vereen Bell Award for creative writing, and served as a member of Davidson's championship team on the General Electric College Bowl. After receiving his B.A. in 1969, he did graduate work at the Breadloaf School of English and entered graduate school at the University of Arkansas, earning the M.A. in 1972 and the M.F.A. in 1973. While a student at Arkansas, he received the John Gould Fletcher Award for Poetry. He has also won the Breakthrough Award from the University of Missouri Press and, in 2004, the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has taught at Lamar University since 1976, and is the editor of the Penguin Pocket Anthology series from Pearsona/Longman. His new collection of poems is Dogwatch, from Measure Press.

Below is an excerpt from the satirical essay Gwynn contributed to Volume 2:2 — "Is There Something Ghotiy in This Class?"

          “Wait!” said another student (Mr. B+), a young male with cardinal dreadlocks, dental braces and a pierced uvula, which he would display upon request. “‘Read’ could be a pun for ‘red’; put that together with ‘Kennedy’ and you've got something.  My grandfather who fought against France in one of those world wars always said that Kennedy, who was president back in the forties, was a ‘red.’  He meant a commie. I've been taking an elective called ‘The Red Scare Deconstructed: A Kinder, Gentler Stalin.’We call him Papa Joe in our class.”

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Read Gwynn's hilarious piece in full in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2!

Reece A. J. Chambers, from Volume 2:2

Reece A. J. Chambers is a twenty-one year old writer from Northamptonshire, England. He graduated from the University of Northampton with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing in 2014. His work has been published in Red Kite, a book compiled by the university and available online, while the bulk of his poetry can be seen on Hello Poetry (prose on WordPress). He is influenced by many writers, including Sylvia Plath, Nick Hornby, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger and J. K. Rowling.

Below is an excerpt from "The Part Where I Fall Asleep," Chambers's poem in Volume 2:2.

          I like when it begins   the white
          icing of a dream   and the ones I only know
          with my eyes closed   glow like rubies
          brighter than   raspberries in July.

          [...]

          I like the bench   in your back garden
          and us on it   I like the heady loveliness of it all

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Read Chambers's poem in its entirety in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2.

Roxy Brown, from Volume 2:2

Roxy Brown is a writer from San Diego who is centered in a  unique but contemporary style. Her influence starts with cacoethes scribendi — "the insatiable urge or itch to write" — and is fueled further by muses such as Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, Khalil Gibran, Anais Nin, and Natalie Eilbert. She currently is in the process of obtaining her degree in neuroscience with an emphases in creative writing.

Below is an excerpt of Brown's poem, "Neophobia," from Volume 2:2:

          Two years ago
          the garden of Eden, apart
          from its virginity, was something.

          [...]

          The vehicle is simple: to leave Adam and Eve
          will have to fit better than all this skin.

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Take a look inside Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2 to read Brown's poem in full!

R. W. Haynes, from Volume 2:2

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

Below is an excerpt of Hayne's poem in Volume 2:2, "The Slayer of Pain":

          And now the war is gone, and we review
          The smoking ruins of history, yes, mm-hmm,
          Breakfast in bed, green jays outside yodeling
          Like rednecks, love everywhere, music etc.

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This poem can be found in full inside Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2.

Dylan Flint, from Volume 2:2

Dylan Flint is a Washington native with deep ties to the Pacific Northwest and Seattle. Currently a full time University of Washington student, Dylan enjoys philosophical debates, spirituality, and pumpkin spice lattes. His job involves building and renovating old wooden boats, and he is currently accepting applications for an around-the-world sailing voyage. In his rare moments of free time, Dylan can be found practicing yoga on the roof of his Capitol Hill Apartment, or exploring the deep complexities of the human condition in meditation.


Below is an excerpt of Flint's piece in Volume 2:2, "<fireflies>," which originally appeared on Hiibye.com in June 2014.


My aunt politely corrected me, “Well actually if you know a lobsterman you could go out on his boat, catch a lobster, and then head to one of the islands out there, and boil him over a fire. I think that would actually be the freshest way.”

I asked her if this was a long lost dream of hers. You know, with the whole burly lobsterman snatching a crustacean out of the murky depths of the forbidding Atlantic, and just the two of them, sitting there on an island around a man-made fire where they would wait in each other’s arms for their booty to boil, before tearing apart its body and devouring its sweet meat.

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To read Flint's prosaic meditation in its entirety, navigate to page 9 of Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2!

John McKernan, from Volume 2:2

John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska – is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives – most of the year – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press, which publishes an annual poetry magazine and publishes each year a first book of poetry in the ABZ Poetry Prize Contest.  His most recent work is a selected poems book Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field, and many other magazines.

Below is an excerpt from his poem "Tomato," the first piece in Volume 2:2.

I don't think this music

will hurt you at all   Roy

Orbison & in a few moments   Emmy

Lou Harris    It does something to

my heart    Somehow it can

coax memories to rise that lie

buried like fine white roots in clay

searching for water    Anywhere   Somehow

Still connected to the sunlight

Even the moon has tentacles

Silent mirror in the sky's black ink

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To read this poem in full and the others contributed by this fabulous poet, peek inside Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2.

Shane Castaneda and Melonie Weismann, from Volume 2:2

Shane Castaneda, a native of San Diego, California specializing in visual arts, provides the front and back cover art for Volume 2:2. His interests in the visual arts are expansive, a fact reflected in his greatly differing styles. He considers his influences to be all graffiti enthusiasts (living or dead), Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and the sometimes naturally barren, sometimes over-industrialized landscapes of southern California.

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Melonie Weismann provides all of the internal art for Volume 2:2. She craves the texture of oil paints, the click of her camera's moving parts, and the friction of colored pencils on paper. Trained at the University of California at Santa Barbara, her thoughts often revolve around the fertilization of creation within destruction, the power of collective consciousness, and minimalist non-attachment. She enjoys blending the real and the surreal, building bridges between the real world and the dream world for those who don't yet know them as one and the same. A transplant from northern California, Melonie finds inspiration in the foreign flora and barren desert landscapes of the southern region. She is currently focused on designing immersive audiovisual experiences with the Triptych collective in San Diego, California.

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Experience a wide array of artwork in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2!