Synkronciiti is thrilled to welcome poet Carla Hartsfield, born in Texas and residing in Ontario, with “Bookends,” a moving piece about abuse and survival. A piano prodigy from age 4, Carla was beaten and mentally damaged by her mother, who used religion like a cudgel. Years later, she was beaten in a car traveling down the freeway by a man she had hoped would be a protector. Overcoming these bookends of violence has been the struggle of her life. “Surgery could not erase scars./ I don’t look in the mirror./ I know who I once was/ before the bookends crushed/ the person I didn’t believe in.”
Watching fireflies one night, she contemplates how she has survived and retained her light, even through those dark times. “Only I can change who I talk to./ How I survive. Like me, those bugs/ just turn themselves on and off,/ alien beings caught in a jar.” Autonomy did not come easy, and it requires constant renewal and attention to not return to the mental darkness abuse creates. So many people experience this and then find the subject taboo when they need to break their silence. Carla shows us that it can be done with dignity and that it can change our sense of identity.
Carla writes with such vulnerability and such clear imagery, giving us a sense of the pain without allowing it to drown us. She has become the protector and empath that she needed when she was between bookends.
Read “Bookends” in Synkroniciti’s “Identity” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. Carla will also be joining us for “Recovery,” our June issue.
Carla Hartsfield is a classically trained pianist, poet, singer-songwriter and visual artist. She has published three chapbooks and three volumes of poetry, the most recent with Brick Books, titled YOUR LAST DAY ON EARTH. Carla’s books have been nominated for prizes from the League of Canadian Poets and the Writer’s Trust of Canada. You can find her original music on Apple and Spotify.