Synkroniciti is glad to welcome back poet Joanne Durham from North Carolina, with “Inheritance,” an ekphrastic poem based on a sculpture her mother bought many years ago featuring three peasant girls. “They dance/ on the clay’s rough waves, heads thrown back in joy,/ no need to wonder/ if there will be bread tomorrow.” Joanne wonders what is it about the sculpture that so captivated her mother and now herself. Watching Fiddler on the Roof and dozing slightly, she has a moment of revelation.
Ekphrastic poems at their best extend beyond description to bring us insights into the life of the poet and our own lives. Joanne brings us into her living room to show ancestors do influence us and give us a sense of place even if their names and lives are seemingly forgotten. Deep in our unconscious minds they have planted seeds that flower centuries later, and art and poetry can be a way to celebrate and recognize those seeds. Joanne’s imagery is beautiful and extremely moving and will have you thinking about the women in your family.
Read “Inheritance” in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Joanne Durham is a retired educator living on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. She is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022), and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay 2023).
Her most recent award is the 2025 Miriam Chaikin Poetry Prize. Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Vox Populi, NC Literary Review, Whale Road Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She loves poetry because, in the words of poet Erik Campbell, “I have a soul that needs a periodic tuneup.”