Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome poet and writer Catherine Harnett, currently based in Virginia, with a captivating flash fiction/ poem hybrid, “Moon Circle,” exploring the connections between femininity and the moon. Women come together in a moonlit dance, set apart to celebrate life and nurturing energy.
“We are barefoot in dry grass, our movements are urgent./ We close our eyes, raise our arms, cover our mouths./ It is a dance only women know. Barefoot in the field,/ we do not rehearse. The men cannot see or hear us,/ they are somewhere else.”
These women are not here to dominate the earth nor to be dominated, but for a holy, sacred purpose. “Our moon does not tell us what to do; there are no/ tasks, just observations, celebrations.” They are here to take part in creation and to watch over new life, not to prove themselves. This mysterious and gracious energy acts as a counterweight balancing the desire for profit and exploitation–a reminder that nothing can be produced without nature’s involvement.
Catherine weaves this evocative plot with a poem’s stanzaic form and alliterative musicality, giving it a formality that emphasizes the dreamlike, resonant majesty of the feminine ethos.
Read “Moon Circle” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
“I’m a published poet and fiction author originally from New York. As a child I hid in the bathroom, read the dictionary and wrote poetry until someone needed to pee; but later, I wrote in the open, in cafes or museums or in my roachy apartment across from the Cathedral. Poetry was antithetical to my work in the federal government, which paid the bills and gave me the chance to travel to Burma and Thailand, Pakistan and Laos on official business. I’ve always been a little off: synesthetic, neurodiverse, unaware of my environment; Irish-Catholic, drawn to myths and miracles. Born under the sign of Cancer, the moon comforts, awes and guides me no matter where I am.”