Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back poet Sandi Stromberg of Houston with “Pipe Dream,” one of our “Dreams “poetry contest finalists. Sandi recounts a trip to Singapore and the sensation that her late husband was inexplicably present.
“I don’t want to write another poem about my husband’s death./ He never traveled// to the Far East. Yet his presence blossoms. I feel him take/ my hand as the doors open and we step// inside the train, claim seats offered in a society/ that treats seniors like royalty.// There is nowhere the mind cannot go./ No dusty corner emotions cannot find.”
Sandi’s poetry is so distilled that emotion bleeds through every bit of subtle imagery. No word is wasted, and this economy reveals complex thought and emotion. One of the most difficult tasks in poetry is to create a natural freshness, a simplicity without cliche, that invites the reader to take the poem into their inner space, to live with another’s truth close to their heart. Sandi excels in this. We feel as if we have been taken into confidence as an equal. The naked vulnerability and earnestness in this poem are so touching that we find ourselves encouraged and enlightened by her open faith. If we slow down and access our intuition, what togetherness might we find with those who are no longer on this plane?
Read “Pipe Dream” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Sandi Stromberg, author of Frogs Don’t Sing Red, has just had her second collection, Moonlight, Shaken, accepted for publication in early 2026. Her poems have recently been accepted by The Orchards Poetry Journal, Panoply, MockingHeart Review, and Synkroniciti—and have appeared in Pulse, Equinox, Gyroscope Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Senior Class, among others. An editor at The Ekphrastic Review, she also edited two anthologies of poetry—Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera. A four-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee, she was a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times. Dutch translations of her poems have appeared in Brabant Cultureel.