Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet Lori Howe of Wyoming with a stunning cadralor. A cadralor is a poem comprised of five seemingly unrelated stanzas based on sensory, particularly visual, imagery and resisting traditional narrative. Beneath these distinct scenes runs a live current of synchronicity, flowering in the final stanza. Lori created this form with Christopher Cadra and it remains one of our favorites.
“Cadralor #24, Intermolecular Attraction” is one of our “Audacity” poetry contest finalists. It is an evocative and complex poem, weaving biology, anthropology, history, chemistry and physics into an exploration of connection as an antidote to the toxins released in the relentless pursuit of wealth. This desire to reach out is primal and not unique to humans. Lori postulates that it is the underlying concept that moves (and heals) the universe.
“We learn to isolate gold, sequestering mercury into water or sand,/ pulling what is toxic away from what is precious. Mercury vaporizes when heated,/ turns invisible. When we have finished, though, where does bitterness live?”
The poem moves through a series of vivid, surprising images to trace a few of the forms connection can take. From the whistled language of the Canary Islands to the uncanny bond of mass delusion, it shows how our longing to communicate and belong can bridge distances or lead us astray. Two audacious survival stories, a storm‑tossed alligator falling from the sky and a girl emerging alive from a lightning‑struck plane crashed into the Amazon rainforest, underscore the fierce persistence of life which refuses to be disconnected. The synchronized glow of fireflies becomes a reminder that nature is full of communal rhythms which are mirrored in our bodies.
The final stanza moves through electromagnetic waves, eel electrolocation, and the nautilus’s spiraled chambers before arriving at the intimate desire for a lover’s touch. Connection is not a luxury but an imperative. Nature itself is structured around attraction, resonance, and the pull toward relationship. We echo nature because we are nature.
Lori paints each episode with care and detail. We find ourselves carried across time and space on a hunt for echoes and are not disappointed. Life at its core is audacious, surprising and interconnected.
Read “Cadralor #24, Intermolecular Attraction” in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Lori Howe is a co-creator of the new poetic form, the cadralor. She is also the author of Cloudshade: Poems of the High Plains (Sastrugi Press, 2015) and Voices at Twilight (Sastrugi Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as The Meadow, Clerestory, Red Hook, Verse-Virtual, McQueen’s Quinterly, and Pilgrimage. She is a poetry editor with Sastrugi Press, as well as a phenomenologist whose peer-reviewed research appears in The Journal of Poetry Therapy, Qualitative Inquiry, and others.
She holds a Ph.D. in Literacy Education and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from the University of Wyoming, where she is now an Assistant Professor in the Honors College. She is the Editor in Chief of Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor.
She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.