Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back midwestern poet and photographer Jeannie E. Roberts with two poems illustrated with her photos. The first, “Swimming with the Radiance of You,” is an ode to a sparkling young woman who began to lose her spark “the day wedlock/ docked/ in closed creek” and “liberty entered/ an inkwell/ of fear.” The long, thin form of the poem illustrates the confinement and repression many women and some men feel in their marriages and relationships, but it also pictures the resolve to regain control of one’s life and exit the straight jacket of an unhealthy situation to find new space. The second poem, “Holding Space with Bookmarks,” is a tribute to Jeannie’s father and their shared love of Keats. Opening a cherished tome (Endymion), she gains comfort from a passage he had bookmarked with a felt mark she had made for him. “In a poetic instant there we were,/ Dad and I— ” Jeannie’s poetic voice dances lightly on the breath, drawing us into a gentle, reassuring embrace.
Experience Jeannie’s rejuvenating poetry and images in Synkroniciti’s November 30th issue, “Space,” Vol. 5, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jeannie E. Roberts’s work appears in online journals, magazines, and print anthologies, including Anti-Heroin Chic, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way Magazine, Bramble, The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Art & Poetry, Portage Magazine, Quill & Parchment, Silver Birch Press, South Florida Poetry Journal, Synkroniciti Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s an award-winning artist and has worked as a freelance fashion and professional portrait photographer. She’s also the author of several books and serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs.