Synkroniciti is glad to welcome back poet and visual artist Diane Funston, a native New Yorker making her home in California, with a poem and a photograph exploring what humans leave behind. “In Place” is a testament to lives cut short by oppressive regimes, be they Nazis or fascists of another brand. A woman, beginning to blossom, is held back by officers who keep her from curiosity and hold her in place, but is betrayed: “even the fish have tongues/ but are without conversation/ someone was supposed to help.” The imagery is dreamlike, with telephone poles becoming Nazi soldiers who melt into bullets and then bones. These nightmares are not tied to a particular physical place, but reside in that part of the collective unconscious that processes war and oppression. In closing, Diane expresses the desire “to be able to look over/ the solid as a promise fence/ see if there are uniforms everywhere.” Will we meet the same fate for looking?
The photo, “Bouquet,” captures a mysterious, haunted moment on a forest trail: “A bouquet was laid out in an area off the beaten path surrounded by tall trees and breathing ferns. No one else was on this trail coming or going. There was a light drizzle and the night before, torrential rains. No footprints were on the muddy trail before or after our arrival.” We wonder who is memorialized here, and by whom.
Experience Diane’s thought-provoking work in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, Vol. 6, No. 4, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Diane Funston has branches for bones and leaves for hair. A true Daphne at heart, she writes poetry and memoir along with visual art in media of collage, mosaics, and wool felting. She appreciates, as a hometown New Yorker, her home in California where gardening is an everyday adventure and possibility. She has recent poems or memoir pieces in or upcoming in Greenprints Magazine, Door is a Jar, Penumbra, t’Art, Bronze Bird Books Climate Change, and Woods Reader, among others.