Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back Pennsylvanian poet Charlie Brice with “The Problem With Time,” a stirring remembrance of family, in particular our furred companions. While looking at Facebook, which stores moments taken out of their place in time, Charlie finds a video of himself dancing to ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ with Mugsi, his beloved standard poodle, his wife behind the camera. “We’re Da, as Heidegger would have it,/ out ahead of ourselves,/ dancing/ dancing/ to the vaporous NOW.” The memory is bittersweet, as Mugsi died of cancer a few years ago and his wife is no longer able to walk. This is the problem with time, that we age as it passes, loved ones and joy falling from us until we are no longer here. Charlie’s vulnerability reminds us to dance, to make connections with those we love and live in the electricity of the moment. Grief is love haunted by absence.
Read “The Problem With Time” in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Miracles That Keep Me Going (WordTech Editions, 2023). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.