Synkroniciti is proud to introduce the artists of our newest online issue, “Intersections,” available for download here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Please join us in welcoming back Lori Lasseter Hamilton, who won our “Intersections” poetry contest with “The Alien of Old Springville Road and Medina Drive.” We are beside Lori on a cold table, lying motionless under the machine that kills her cancer cells. This recalls lying motionless at the threat of her rapist years before. Why are medical institutions unresponsive, even judgemental in the face of trauma? Why can’t they recognize how triggering treatment can be and show compassion? “Patriarchy, institutionalized,” the second of Lori’s poems featured in the issue, shows how society divides us into predators and prey, teaching us to hide any bit of weakness from others, even from ourselves, cloaking it with silence. Worst of all, a woman defending herself is deemed “unladylike” and “concerning.” Society’s tacit agreements are not only insane, but pathological. Surely we can do better, with all our “civilization”?
Lori’s allusions and imagery are compelling and deeply vulnerable–calling out the misogynistic power structures that run business as usual and expressing her frustration with herself for not being able to shake off the influence of that power. If we are honest, we identify with this more than we would like. She tugs at us to do our part to change the reality humanity has built over centuries. Clear-eyed, intelligent, she points out the cultural gas-lighting that involves all of us.
Read Lori’s powerful poetry in the current issue of Synkroniciti, “Intersections.”
Lori Lasseter Hamilton is a medical records clerk for a local hospital in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Some of her poems have appeared in North/South Appalachia, Global Poemic, The Stray Branch, SWWIM, Parousia Magazine, Steel Toe Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more recently, on Poetry Super Highway. Lori’s fourth chapbook of poetry, limo casket, was published by Voice Lux Press in October 2022, and is available at voiceluxjournal.wordpress.com. She is a breast cancer survivor and rape survivor, and holds a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Please follow Lori on Facebook at “The poetry and spoken word of Lori Lasseter Hamilton.“