Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome our final “Recovery” issue artist, poet Sarah Wolfe of New Jersey, with “The Final Credits,” a poem in the form of the credits found at the end of a film. The editor of this feature is “A sentimental, young soul” and the writer is “A silver-haired body with liver-spotted hands and shaky knees, lips that can’t speak out loud but whisper to the mind.” We meet the cast, a close-knit family, from the parents, “two immigrants with one busted suitcase” to the wife, son and daughter. The plot may be fragmented, but the depth of some memories remains–visions from the works of Lewis, Tolkien, and Orwell, sketches of Oaks, Chocolate Babka, a childhood bike… It is no longer linear and the fragile mind is confusing his language, swapping the letter f with the letter n, but it is valuable and touching.
Sarah leaves us an illuminating footnote at the end of this expressive poem. “While the characters and events depicted in this film are based on real people and events happening through a corporeal lens, the actual subject matter is derived from the creative compositions of the soul despite the loss of cognitive functioning. While the human body is invented to inevitably decline the spirit has no cognitive and/or physical limitations to merge life and art.”
The form creates a structure allowing for the rambling nature of memory and resonates with imagery of a life fully lived. Sarah’s empathy is sensitive and heartfelt.
Read “The Final Credits” in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Sarah Wolfe’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Cathexis Northwest Press, Wingless Dreamer, Winamop, and Misfit Magazine. When she is not writing or giving Reiki sessions you can often find her out and about Jersey City in parks, coffee shops, yoga studios, or lost in a really good book.