Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back Indian poet Ankita Sadarjoshi, who last featured in our “Birds” issue back in 2021, with three evocative and introspective poems, one of which won the “Dreams” poetry contest. The prose poem “Play Dead, Play Cool” examines a nightmare induced by tequila. While alcohol is a sedative, as it wears off the human mind goes into REM rebound, making up for lost dreamtime. “It did not help to be in another person’s home, on their couch. Some feeling of discomfort and shame. As for the dream, I was in a dangerous hillside village. My mother phoned to scold me for losing the family dog to a rescue mission. The rescue mission aimed at finding dogs who had been abducted or killed on sight in the dangerous hillside village.” If we borrow Jung’s assertion that everything in the dream reflects some aspect of the dreamer, we might surmise that part of the narrator, symbolized by her mother, is communicating displeasure to her conscious ego for putting her beloved animal nature, symbolized by the family dog with all its affability and gullibility (note it’s not the family cat) at risk.
The visual poem “mother is a myth” is a rhythmic riff on the commercialization of femininity and motherhood and the focus on appearance and beauty products, which do little for the tears and blemishes that appear in our self-image. This poem begs to be read aloud, packed with shifting metrical accents, plosives and sibilants: “locomotion/ cream & lotion/ blush & shadow & steam.” It is a fun read, but also quite astute and biting.
The winner of our contest is “graduation,” which tells the story of an international student in the United States. Leaving home for undeniably valuable education and opportunity, her hopes and dreams shift and transform. This new country is not paradise–although for a woman alone, it is physically safer than home–nor is education alone the answer to internal difficulties or difficulties at home, but the experience of being separated from heritage and family is formative. “Tempo becomes important. Texture/ becomes important. You call home/ often and record the temperature of/ things said. You save your anger/for working men and flirt with/ the study of mice. and bats./ and potted plants.” Ankita’s poetry is laced with nuanced imagery dancing over a vulnerability that is raw and ominous. What she does not say is every bit as powerful as what she reveals.
Read Ankita’s insightful and gorgeous poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Ankita Sadarjoshi is a poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. With a background in dramatic arts, her central focuses include experimenting with the formal constraints of poetry, blending theatre and language, and writing ekphrastically. She writes about beauty, damage, domestic rot, psychological unravel, desire, and place.
Her chapbook pink mortem was published by Bottlecap Press in December 2022. Her poems “sugarburn” and “The Kids Are Awry” have won Academy of American Poets Eileen Lannan Poetry Prizes.
She taught writing to college students in Chicago but now writes and resides in Bangalore.