Synkroniciti is thrilled to announce the winner of our “Audacity” poetry contest, “What We Build” by Jennifer Maloney of New York. We had eleven finalists and all of them will be included in the issue, along with many other fine and deserving poems. If we publish you, we consider you a winner.
“What We Build” was chosen as the winner because it weaves together the personal and the public with remarkable clarity. Inspired by a news story about the sale of the Cohen Building in Washington, D.C., home to numerous New Deal–era murals celebrating the dignity and industry of American workers, the poem situates itself within a rich cultural tapestry. With no mandate to preserve these murals, their destruction is a possibility, and the poem treats this threat as emblematic of larger patterns: the devaluation and loss of historical memory, the proliferation of greed, and the gradual failure of national mythologies that are not allowed to evolve and grow.
“What We Build” is audacious in its honesty. It likens governmental neglect to the cruelty of an abusive spouse, insisting that we must view American history the way we view a Cubist painting: from multiple fractured angles that refuse to resolve neatly. Settled, tidy narratives are not history—they are propaganda. The poem acknowledges that understanding alone does not heal. Just as you would never close a physical wound while infection remains, we cannot continue to hide or feed the societal malaise that festers beneath our stories.
I’ll share more about Jennifer’s work in her Artist Feature later this year, including an excerpt from the poem.
Our runner‑up, “Sonnet” by Nerissa Nields, is a powerful and equally audacious exploration of finding strength in the darkness at the core of our being and extending that grounding even to those who might harm us. Though the two poems take very different paths, they arrive at a similar truth: resilience is forged in the places we least want to look.
You will want to read both of these poems in Synkroniciti’s “Audacity” issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jennifer Maloney is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She writes poetry and fiction; her work is available or forthcoming in Flash Boulevard, Many Nice Donkeys, Ninth Letter and Synkroniciti Magazine. Recent chapbooks include Maps of a World (Raw Earth Ink, 2025) and Red (Clare Songbirds Publishing, forthcoming). Jennifer is a parent, a partner, and a very lucky friend, and she is grateful, for all of it, every day.