Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet, writer, and musician Nerissa Nields, who closes the Audacity issue with two perceptive and luminous poems. Nerissa made her debut with us in Family and will be returning for Expectations.
““How I Would Paint Betrayal” is the story of a divorce reframed as a cataclysm, an earthquake, rearranging the landscape of life in an instant.
“And even when the dust settles and you come up/ From the basement, the aftershocks rippling/ In concentric circles—who gets to keep Richard and Judy?/ Who gets the kids on Thanksgiving?—/ You curse yourself for not noticing the foreshocks/ Why didn’t I go to geology school?”
Like Saba Husain’s “Benchmark: Volcanic Explosivity Index,” also in this issue, Nerissa’s poem expresses the rupture of a relationship in the language of natural disaster but, rather than addressing a judgmental society, Nerissa turns inward, addressing the absent spouse and the bewildered self who must navigate the rubble. We feel the raw exposure and fresh shock of being suddenly laid bare by someone who held our trust, when it is so fresh that there is no desire to fight back, no strategy for resilience.
“Sonnet,” the runner‑up in our Audacity poetry contest, closes the issue. Dedicated to Ha Jin, a Chinese‑American poet, novelist, and member of the Misty Poets, who resisted the artistic restrictions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the poem offers a powerful strategy for facing adversity and adversaries. Its wisdom is beautifully distilled, a quality highly prized in Chinese poetry.
“Do not shoot back. Remember instead/ Your room at the bottom of the world./ Silently wish your shooter to find their own.”
At first glance, this might seem like a philosophy of turning the other cheek, but the intention is more complex, more audacious. The poem does not advocate passivity; it advocates depth. By descending into the lowest, quietest chamber of the self, one finds not surrender but unshakeable grounding. And by wishing the adversary their own descent, one imagines a path toward empathy.
Some may read this as a back‑handed blessing, others as a curse. Yet it holds out a radical hope: that those who harm may someday be transformed by hardship into compassionate people. “Sonnet” is a fitting final note for Audacity—a reminder that boldness is not always loud and that strength can be found in stillness and intention.
Read Nerissa’s powerful poetry in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Nerissa Nields is a writer and musician/songwriter living in Western MA. She’s a founding member of indie-rock band The Nields who have released 21 albums and toured North America. Her short fiction, non-fiction and criticism has appeared in Brevity, J Journal: New Writing on Justice, The Maine Review and American Songwriter, and is forthcoming in the LA Review. She is the current chair for 30 Poems in November, a literary fundraiser for Center for New Americans, an organization that supports immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Western Massachusetts. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA (English) from Yale University. She is currently working on a novel about a family folk-rock band.