Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet and writer Jennifer Maloney, who won our “Vulnerable” contest in flash fiction with “Galena Street,” the story of a child growing up in the shadow of an abusive and mercurial father, constantly terrified by a lack of safety. “I know what it is to be a prisoner, don’t say I don’t. I know how to long. How to count. How to wait with my mouth squeezed tight, tight.” Father has a penchant for model railroading and creating artificial scenes which is echoed in the way the child perceives their surrounding environment–things don’t feel real. Jennifer depicts child abuse in a way that avoids fetishizing violence. She also has two probing poems in the issue. “My Sister Said” is a prose poem about reconciliation between two sisters. “50 years on, she finally extends a hand, lowers the drawbridge. But I swam the moat she dug years ago, crawled through a river of hexes, of ashes and frogs, and climbed the embankment, shivering, but not drowned. And I don’t need her anymore,/ But I am still so happy to stand in front of an open door for once…” Fantastic imagery provides an apt code for half a century of bad blood and hostile intention. “Name, Change” is a lament for and acknowledgement of the nameless women abused by their lovers and husbands, women who can scarcely remember their own identity: “his fist-sized heart,/ his broken-nose love,/ the way he hit me,/ hurt me,/ held me—oh, how he held me,/ wrapped in his arms,/ wrapped in a sheet,/ a sheet white as paper/ scrawled with red letters/ that spelled out a scream—” Jennifer uses repetition and alliteration to create a droning rhythm that sears us to the bone. This is the blues, sung in a smoky bar: “and I smiled, call me,/ call me what you want,/ just call me,/ my number’s written on the wall,/ call me, I’m Gina,/ or Ginger,/ could be Roxie,/ maybe Flo, I’m floating/ from the bandstand/ to the ceiling/ like music,/ like smoke”.
Read Jennifer’s powerful poetry and prose in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jennifer Maloney writes poetry, plays and short fiction. Find her work in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Litro Magazine, Literally Stories and Synkroniciti. Jennifer is the author of the hybrid chapbook Evidence of Fire, Poems & Stories (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023), and the full-length hybrid collection Don’t Let God Know You are Singing (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2024), and she is grateful, for all of it, every day.