Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming poet Jill Crainshaw of North Carolina with “now i lay me down to sleep.” This remarkable poem was a finalist in our “Family” themed poetry contest. It recalls a time when innocence and the illusion of safety was shattered, not by a direct threat, but by the knowledge that a friend was being abused by her father. Sleeping in her own bed, surrounded by a regiment of toy guardians led by her Mrs. Beasley doll–a symbol of family life in 1960s America–the magic of youth evaporates: “mrs beasley was silent and her eyes painted in place and i/ didnt pray anything at all…” The terseness of this poem and lack of punctuation create a stream of consciousness delivery and a sense of pressure, of unspeakable nighttime horrors released into the day, almost confessionally. Most of the time, “I” is not capitalized–only twice, when it refers to consciousness departing for sleep. This seems to indicate that the self is acted upon or acting in intuitive ways, that it does not claim control over the situation. Jill’s use of childhood toys and images makes the underlying threat of violence palpable and chilling while engaging our empathy. The moment we realize that safety is a privilege that does not exist for everyone, we realize that it can vanish at any time.
Read “now i lay me down to sleep” in our “Family” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. We look forward to having her back this fall for our “Haunting” issue.
Jill Crainshaw is a poet and professor who lives and works in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When she is not teaching at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Jill and her two pups, Bella and Penny, look for poems in their backyard. Sometimes, Jill writes them down.
