Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back poet Judy McAmis of Massachusetts with “Curiouser,” one of our “Dreams” poetry contest finalists. The poem recounts an eerie nightmare, an encounter with a friend we surmise is distant, possibly dead, in the waking world. “I reach for you, smiling, loving you as a dear friend does,/ your clothes crumple, I watch your head fall off your body/ I watch it roll under the bed, the floor slips away,/ I am running, I must catch it before it falls into the widening…” In addition to the vivid, cinematic action created through repetition and doubling up two short phrases per line where there is otherwise one, Judy paints a richly textured scene full of velvet, navy blue, deep red tones, and softly glowing embers. This contrasts with the light of day which pours in at the end of the poem, prompting the narrator to ask which reality she prefers–a strange one where her friend seems reachable but beset by surreal terrors, or a world which seems too bright in her absence. Allusions to Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland add cultural resonance to a deeply personal dream.
Read “Curiouser” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Judy McAmis is a poet, yoga instructor, sound healer, and wild spirit. Her work is heavily weighted in feminism, spiritualism and the occult, and the mythological diaspora. She has published poems in The Banyan Review, Pensive Literary Journal, Ghost City Press, and Synkroniciti among others. She has attended Elk River Writer’s Conference, Holy Gossip Writer’s Workshop, and most recently Community of Writers Conference. Judy is currently working on a chapbook and full-length poetry manuscript.