Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet, writer and photographer Jonathan Yungkans with “Next to the Penny Left in the Ashtray,” a lyrical essay/extended prose poem that explores how belonging can transcend time and space. Tokens which show up in our daily life, as simple as pennies or stuffed tigers, transport us from the present into memory, tying us to loved ones who have died and hinting at something that lives on just beyond the world we perceive.
“Something, if unsealed, would pour out and spread like ripples, as promises can when fulfilled. Like the promise my sister-in-law gave my wife and me just before she died. Said she’d send pennies by which to remember her. Becoming many pennies, dropping at irregular intervals. My sister-in-law liked to surprise us and still does, insisting she still belongs in our lives—as if my wife or I would have it any other way.”
Formally, the essay is banded with italicized paragraphs. The italicized portions form a secondary structure inside the main structure which has its own sense, a poem within a poem or an essay within an essay. It’s quite ingenious and there is a lot of unpacking to get all the nuance here. This also gets at the duality of life–our inner and outer worlds coexist and interplay with one another, but they aren’t exactly the same story.
Jonathan has an extraordinary talent for exploring the abstract and ineffable through the use of metaphor and detailed sensory imagery. “Next to the Penny Left in the Ashtray” is exemplary in this regard, looking at the wondrous and strange as revealed by the everyday and common. Profound Jungian and philosophical concepts–things that are near impossible to put into words–are illustrated and illuminated, including synchronicity. He never claims to define or explain these things, he simply wonders and reveals with tenderness the quirks of this thing called life.
Read “”Next to the Penny Left in the Ashtray” in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jonathan Yungkans sips iced pumpkin spice cold-brew coffee in hope that cooler thoughts might prevail in the last of the summer heat waves. Occasional helpings of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond ice cream have also helped fuel his imagination in this regard. His work has appeared in Gleam, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Panoply and other publications.