Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back poet Mary Ellen Talley from Seattle with a delightful short poem riding the edge between whimsical and profound, as many dreams do. “Acceleration in a Dream State” is about metaphysical bicycling. Every time the dreamer pedals, they “can read the fine print/ on the sticky note/ reminding” them their “helmet is leaking.” We don’t know the cause for the subconscious warning, like a safety light coming on, or the nature of the leak, but we can surmise that it’s telling them to get off the bike, to walk this next stretch. At the very least it hints at modifying behavior to avoid a crash. So often humor is a better approach to correction than punishment or fear, and our subconscious minds can be quite wacky to get our attention. This is a well-built poem with succinct imagery and a sense of wonder underlying the connection between the mind and the body. Mary Ellen creates a smooth flow with no punctuation, much in the same way a cyclist doesn’t stop the flow of motion as they ride.
Read “Acceleration in Dream State” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Mary Ellen Talley hails from Seattle, Washington and is a distraught dreamer because she has a poor oneiric life. She admires poets who wake up remembering dreams they can use as poetry prompts. In real life, she has had poems published in journals such as Deep Wild, Banshee, CIRQUE, and in anthologies such as Sing the Salmon Home. Her third and latest chapbook is Taking Leave from Kelsay Books. She spent many years as a school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP).