Synkroniciti is proud to welcome poet and author Jenifer DeBellis from Detroit with two chilling poems about structural violence. The first, Indecent Exposure, a finalist in our “Vulnerable” contest, recalls a news story entitled Honor Related Violence Reaches the States. A young Muslim woman is viciously attacked by her brother with a knife for “not lowering her eyes.” Left for dead, she survives, now scarred. “Nothing her niqab won’t cover,/ though. She’s since returned/ home, where it’s expected/ she’ll make a full recovery.” The cynicism of the final line is palpable. This woman has been corrected and cowed but she will never again be whole. The form of the poem is jagged, some lines heavily indented to illustrate the gouges left by the knife, and the alliteration is percussive and aggressive. The second poem is a more personal one, but no less tragic. “You Know How This Story Goes” is dedicated to the memory of Johnny Brown IV of Flint, Michigan, killed by an angry white man who sprayed bullets across a storefront. The authorities twist the story to implicate Johnny because it’s easier to blame a black man than a white one, despite the context of the 911 call, the evidence at the scene, and the testimony of Johnny’s white girlfriend, who they write off as hysterical. Johnny’s friends “wonder if they should sleep, if they can/ ever close their eyes again & not see his// lifeless body just before they covered him/ with a reusable black-brown everyday tarp.” Jenifer charges the authorities with upholding a system that sees black and brown people as disposable. She writes this searing lament as a long series of two-line stanzas that pop and sizzle with fricatives and alliteration. These poems are powerful because they are raw, emotional and indignant, demanding a response.
Read Jenifer’s powerful poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jenifer DeBellis, M.F.A., is a transformational speaker and the author of New Wilderness (a finalist in the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award and 2023 International Book Awards), Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free from Your Assault (2nd edition forthcoming March 2025), and Blood Sisters. She edits Pink Panther Magazine and directs aRIFT+Warrior Project and Detroit Writers’ Guild (501c3). She’s featured in Psychology Today and her writing appears in CALYX, the Good Men Project, Medical Literary Messenger, Solstice, and elsewhere. A former Meadow Brook Writing Project fellow, JDB facilitates summer workshops for Oakland University and teaches at Macomb Community College.