Synkroniciti is always thrilled to feature the poetry and prose of Jennifer Maloney of New York. “Patterns” contains two dark pieces that are deeply thought-provoking and heart-wrenching. “When We Were Friends” is a wistful look at childhood in her neighborhood, when a few streets were the world. There is a sense of possibility, wildness and danger that presages tragedy.
“Your mother leaning/ out the upstairs window, singing/ Bevvie, don’t fight with your friends/ when we shrieked, pulled each other’s hair,/ we ourselves/ the only feasible target/ for our rage at being small.”
This wildness becomes a self-destructive pattern that permeates the neighborhood. Many residents die young, and do not rest even in death. Nostalgia is balanced by a recognition that this was a logical and foreseeable way for these patterns to play out. Sadness meets resignation and fatalism. Jennifer’s masterful use of repetition and rhythm give this poem a dignity that belies the roughness of the community.
“They fight, they laugh, they pull my hair,/ noisy and foolish as they were in life./ I thought the afterlife/ was supposed to make us wise,/ but my dead refuse to change—.”
“Scheduled Substance” walks the edge between prose poetry and flash as it examines the patterns of authoritarianism: infringed rights, the increasing presence of law enforcement, the monetization of basic needs and pacification of the downtrodden. It’s a hair-raising piece, and all the more so because it reflects modern American reality.
“You need a permit. Permits are unobtainable. Unless you have the means to obtain one. Do you?
Police have a special license. The President cannot be charged while holding office and he will always hold office. We pretend we don’t notice the senators. Or the President’s children. In and out. It’s considered unseemly to remark on it.”
Jennifer creates an intense portrait of the fear that results from the realization that there is no law and no mode of behavior that protects you if the authorities determine you are not conforming to their will. Marginalized people have always known this. “Scheduled Substance” is chilling and, in the wake of the shootings in Minneapolis, eerily prescient. We hope that our country will not come to this, and yet, deep down we know it already has.
Read Jennifer’s hard-hitting and audacious writing in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, Vol. 7, No. 4, available for purchase 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.