Synkroniciti is glad to welcome back poet and writer Tammy Smith of New Jersey with two lovely, thoughtful poems. “A Cross-Stitch of Light” invites us to slow down and recognize our internal tendency to mirror and amplify voices that diminish our confidence and self-love. It takes courage to resist, and even the strongest of us can’t always manage it. Tammy reminds us that it’s an art and requires practice.
“Watch an open mind interpret herself—/ a gallery of images, an invitation/ to reflect inward, to release/ inhibitions, to deconstruct/ the shape shame takes/ when it lodges itself/ between memory and movement—”
“The Shape Grieving Takes” is one of our “Patterns” poetry finalists. Tammy uses rich and relatable imagery to paint a portrait of the unpredictable forms that grief takes. We know it’s coming after loss and yet we are never prepared for how it will manifest.
“You anticipate its arrival./ Worse than jet lag,/ grief doesn’t land or settle,/ but hovers, thick and dense,/ below the throat, over the heart—”
“Grief is a platitude, a repetition, a compulsion— the hiss of a serpent lurking in tall grass.”
Tammy’s metaphors don’t just describe grief—they enact and embody it. The language keeps shifting, accumulating, refusing to settle. Grief isn’t an abstract state here but a series of physiological sensations with metaphysical implications.
Read Tammy’s illuminating poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Tammy Smith is a psychiatric social worker from New Jersey who studies patterns for a living—some to survive, some to advocate, and some simply to understand her own story (preferably without repeating the same mistakes). Her poetry has appeared in ONE ART, Grand Little Things, New Verse News, and elsewhere.