Synkroniciti is proud to welcome back Iowan poet Suzanna C. de Baca with two poems pursuing the ineffable through nature. “Cardinals Among Us” recalls a business interview with a woman recovering her sense of self after her mother’s death. A snow globe on the table, containing a tiny bird, a cardinal, in a tree provokes a reaction. Months later, working at the company, the woman reveals that her mother had told her “the dead/ return in the form of birds. Look for the cardinals/ and know I am here.” These moments of synchronicity are unlikely and tenuous, making them all the more powerful in the human psyche. What is even more striking here is that the woman passes her revelation to the poet, who sees a cardinal at her bird feeder and recognizes its comfort in her own life. Human connection is magical in the way it transmits experience, the way we sometimes partake of each other’s symbols, and Suzanna’s sensitivity and wonder mean the reader gets to share in this as well. We are carried forward by means of enjambment, pausing at the end of each stanza, graceful sibilants collecting like snow flakes. “What is the Coyote Saying?” is one of our poetry contest finalists for the issue. If you have ever heard the calls of coyotes at night, their high, pointed voices hauntingly fascinating, you probably remember the sound. “In the timber, in the fields,/ they cry in the dark: Aw-ooooo,/ and a reply, Yip, yip, yip. ” There is something ineffable in the call, something lonely that raises the hackles and yet pulls at our empathy. Suzanna takes a few moments to ponder what the coyotes are saying to one one another and personify them. The poem is full of repetition and alliteration that creates a spell-like quality, an incantation that enchants and then is gone.
Read Suzanna’s evocative poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Suzanna C. de Baca is a native Iowan, proud Latina, businessperson, author and artist. She is an member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Her poetry has been published in numerous literary journals, including: Etched Onyx; Wholeness; Written Tales; Impermanent Earth; Voices de la Luna; Choeofpleirn Press; Our Silent Voices Anthology; Black Fox Literary Magazine; iō Literary Review;Yellow Arrow Press; The Letter Review; Way Words Literary Journal; Telling Magazine; Plate of Pandemic; Persimmon; LitEZINE; Blue Heron Review; Call me [Brackets]at University of Alabama, Consortium and other outlets. She is the recipient of the Derick Burleson Poetry Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in the small rural town of Huxley, Iowa, population 4244.