Synkroniciti is excited to welcome poet Jessica Cohn, currently based in Santa Cruz, California, with three thought-provoking poems. “Languishing” is a clear-eyed lament for the American Justice system and “the turns we take from and on each other.” A strange appearance of bird feathers on the courthouse steps after a rain storm seems to presage further brutality made possible by our desire to provide due process, giving evil time to strike. “Broken Skies” again takes its cue from rain storms and their intensity and violence as they beat down on human settlements, rearranging what has been constructed and releasing every day pollutants. “Hour upon hour water washes water dirtier.” Beyond the ideas of sin and attachment, unthinking persistence is victorious. This does not bode well for humanity. In “Return of Coyote,” Coyote awakes from centuries of sleep to an Earth which is post Industrial Revolution. “People have been busy, Coyote thought. That cannot be good.” The trickster’s humor belies the desperate situation of our beleaguered planet, but perhaps it also contains a means for healing. Part of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on Lake Superior in Upper Michigan, Jessica has a profound feeling for myth and its place in everyday life. If we lose the reverence for the Earth and for life which myth encodes in memory, we fall easy prey to the profiteers who destroy environments and souls while demanding impunity. If we revere the wrong things–money, conquest, control–we become the profiteers. Her writing features a beautiful combination of intelligence and intuition that creates sparks on the page.
View Jessica’s poetry in our upcoming September 1st issue, “Broken,” available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jessica Cohn lives in the West, on California’s Central Coast, after earlier chapters in the Northeast and Midwest. For information about her writing background and a list of publications, please see jessicacohn.net And if you ever see her in the wild—at a reading or workshop or whatever—please say hi.