Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back poet Jonathan Yungkans. “For the Wind Passes Over It: Five Questions from Neruda” is a masterfully haunting cadralor, a five stanza poem in which each stanza is an episode based on imagery and the connection between stanzas bristles with synchronicity. A World War era bicycle is enveloped by a sycamore: “Did tree and bike grow closer as the world rode past,” a friend keeps her gym routine steady at the tender age of 102: “less tug-of-war with time, more cable going back and forth in a groove on a pulley at a measured pace,” there’s been a fire near a hospital: “Through waiting room glass, we watch workers shovel a path through thick ash,” a pomegranate tree stands raided: its fruit splattering the sidewalk with “Red-purple streaks like fireworks bursts,” a sister-in-law in the form of a monarch butterfly lights in the plumbago: “Does she stop there so there is no glass between us?” These disparate elements are connected by Jonathan’s sensitive synapses and sculpted word forms which ring with rhythm, assonance and alliteration. There is a profound sense of weathering and loss, and yet something unquantifiable seems to endure, to escape on the wind and transform. This is the mystery and promise of mutability in the face of mortality.
Experience Jonathan’s mystical poem in the newest issue of Synkroniciti, “Curiosity,” now available for purchase and digital download here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jonathan Yungkans listens to the pouring Southern California rain in the wee hours of what some call morning and others some mild form of insanity and types while watching a large skunk meander under the foundation of a century-old house. He is thankful when his writing is less noxious than that jittery creature on the other side of those floorboards. During what some choose to call normal hours, he works as an in-home health-care provider, fueled by copious amounts of coffee while finding time for the occasional deep breath. His poems have appeared in Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Panoply, Unbroken and other publications.