Synkroniciti is proud to welcome Houston poet and writer Sandi Stromberg with a captivating poem set in the Space City. “Why I Need the Cosmos” is a juxtaposition of modern life, filled with fragility and noise, with the silence and comparative permanence of the cosmos. Personal struggles create a desperate need to turn outward for renewal. “…I would like to walk/ down Saturn Lane and board the Space Shuttle, ask it/ to propel me through Earth’s atmosphere into the dark/ silence of space…” This moment of yearning for escape between waves of empathy vibrates with vulnerability as we follow “…three/wobbly planets orbiting the edge of a black hole.” Sandi’s use of enjambment thrusts us breathlessly forward while her conversational tone draws us in like a confidant.
Experience “Why I Need the Cosmos” in Synkroniciti’s November 30th issue, “Space,” Vol. 5, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Sandi Stromberg’s full-length collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red (Kelsay Books, April 2023) includes several works nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review, edited Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston, and co-edited Echoes of the Cordillera (Museum of the Big Bend), an anthology of ekphrastic poems in conversation with the photography of Jim Bones. Her poems have appeared recently in Panoply (new Pushcart Prize nominee), San Pedro River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and MockingHeart Review. Translations of her poetry into Dutch can be found at Brabant Cultureel and on the website of Dutch poet, Albert Hagenaars.