Synkroniciti is excited to welcome writer Martha Ellen Johnson with “Getting Rid of the Books of a Dead Poseur II,” which won our Audacity essay/ creative non-fiction contest. This story is a masterpiece of form and foreshadowing, a spiraling revelation descending through the dark strata of truth concealed in the book collection of the man who fathered her son during a brief entanglement in the free‑love era of the 1960s. By the time we reach the final page, we are perched on the edge of our seat, horrified by what this man—this self‑styled intellectual—carried out decades earlier. Understanding flares up from the ashes of memory long cooled.
“His first lie to me was, ‘I’m a writer.’ His poems were off-limits, though, beyond the comprehension of a dumb girl from the streets. Once, when he was away, I found three: a letter to another girl and two Beat poems. I did not know there would be much more to come.”
The essay unfolds through the books Henry left behind, each reigniting memory and a providing a lens through which Martha Ellen reinterprets the man she once knew but never truly saw. Some books receive leniency and are left in places where others might enjoy them. Others, particularly the philosophy and psychology texts that seem to rationalize his narcissism and audacious ego, meet harsher fates. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness meets its end in the birdbath in her garden, as evidenced by the cover photo. As we sift through the collection with her, the real story emerges: Henry was a serial pedophile who preyed on teenage girls. And even that, chilling as it is, proves not to be the deepest shadow in his soul. He left a confession pressed between the pages which burns down the reality Martha Ellen had accepted for decades and reveals how close she once lived to the edge.
Read “Getting Rid of the Books of a Dead Poseur II” in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Martha Ellen Johnson is a retired social worker living in an old Victorian house on a hill on the Oregon coast. She has an MFA from Portland State University. Her poems and prose are published in various journals and online forums. She is thrilled to have survived her wild life and she writes all about it.