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Book Review: Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine by Tureeda Mikell
In her first full length poetry book, Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine, published by Oakland’s own Nomadic Press in February of this year, Oakland native Tureeda Mikell is almost as playful as she is critical. I read the poems as liberatory spells against the damage and coercive power certain myths embedded in American culture can have.
“Why alter earth’s altar?” Mikell asks in her poem “SPELL’S LABYRINTHS: DOUBLE TALK,” then soon after asks “Why did the son of the sun worship with warship?”
Like much of the book, wordplay and inquiry saturate language while commonly accepted meaning of words are never taken for granted. She critiques war and seeking dominion over nature but instead of telling the reader what to think, she prods them with loaded questions, and we are forced to deal with both the loads and the questions.
For me, reading Mikell’s loaded questions sparked my own questions, like: What is earth’s altar? and, Who is the son of the sun? and How does he worship with warship?
Since Christianity is referenced so much in the book, I found myself seeing Christ as the “son of the sun.” In a poem just pages earlier called “THE SUN,” Mikell uses an often forgotten Christ quote from The Book of Matthew that rubs against the typical…