Synkroniciti is stoked to welcome Californian poet Dave Seter with three satirical poems about belonging in modern society. The first, “If Hatred is a Red Hat,” is a clever play on the anagrams “red hat,” “hatred,” and “thread.” “Tell you what./ You turned your life around./ Let’s turn the word hatred around./ Turn hatred into a red hat./ Dip it in blue dye/ and make it purple.” Dave’s tongue-in-cheek reference to the current American political landscape and his colloquial language is disarming, persistent and in line with American pragmatism. There is nothing elitist in his tone, and his second poem, “Part of the Hive, ” confirms this, asking us to reconsider our attitudes toward worker bees, i.e. public servants, especially if they give us a disdain for ourselves. “We won’t be caught in the cogs; we have wings/ to escape the poisonous thoughts of others, a hive mind that says stop and smell the flowers/ buzzing with special knowledge;/ some of us bakers, some bandagers, some psychic healers,/ heroes to someone even just once…” In a society obsessed with fame, celebrity and money this is a refreshing attitude. Finally, “The Tiki Bar Where El Presidente Presides” takes us to Havana in search of the inverted Manhattan cocktail known as El Presidente. “Michael describes his special recipe of grenadine,/ floral Bess is a regular but he includes me, a newbie,/ in offering a sample, mead of the Caribbean gods and goddesses,/ and the ocean singing through conch shells straight into my ears…” It’s a silly and sweet homage to the social bonding and community that comes from such a quest (and imbibing together). Dave’s affable poetry is colorful and full of sassy rhythmic punch, assonance and structural repetition.
Read Dave’s upbeat poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Dave Seter is a civil engineer and poet who likes “concrete” imagery (pun intended). He is the author of Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag). He writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersection of the built world and natural world. He is also an emerging translator of contemporary Lithuanian poetry. His poems have won the KNOCK Ecolit Prize and received third place in the William Matthews competition. His work has appeared in Appalachia, Cider Press Review, The Florida Review, The Hopper, The Museum of Americana, Poetry Northwest (forthcoming), and others. He was recently named Sonoma County Poet Laureate for 2024-26. His favorite forms of procrastination are playing disc golf and traipsing the hills of Sonoma County looking for badgers and quail.