Thanks to all who submitted poetry for the Dignity issue. It’s one if the strongest fields of poems we have seen to date.
The twelve finalists are:
Synkroniciti is pleased to announce the winner, “The creek” by Sara McAulay. The poem explores the atrocity behind the name of a creek where she and her brother played as children. He was older, more versed in the workings of colonial patriarchy, but it was Sara who suddenly realized that the creek’s name was not gibberish. It was an allusion to an Indigenous woman who likely lost her life there.
“The creek” is not only remarkable for its formidable technique, pacing, and word music, but also shines because it connects to history in an emotional and ominous way. It verges on horror as young Sara visualizes the woman beneath the water’s surface, a woman held beneath the flow of recorded time, nameless, broken, but still present.
I’ll share more about “The creek” in Sara’s upcoming Artist Feature, including an excerpt.
Sara McAulay comes from a long line of storytellers and singers, with an oblique math gene. Her grandmother talked to animals, and so does she. Her mother’s soprano once shattered a glass. Her father was an engineer—not the kind who drove a train, alas, though he did design bridges and highways.
Her brother too was an engineer, plotting rocket trajectories for NASA, designing model airplanes for free-flight competition in his spare time. Those planes had 6-8 foot wingspans, and looked like prehistoric birds. She couldn’t call them beautiful, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away. “Anyone who could design those things isn’t an engineer, he’s a poet,” she told him. Her brother said, “Anyone who sees them that way isn’t a poet, she’s an engineer.”
Sara has received NEA and NJ State Arts Council fellowships for prose. Recent poetry and flash fiction have been nominated for Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Ask River, is available from Finishing Line Press.