Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back the last of our “Family” artists, poet, writer and photographer Jonathan Yungkans. “My Brother’s Favorite Pastime” is a memory of a brother long lost to mental illness and his love for fireworks, beautiful and dangerous: “and in your red were the colors of the sky,/ into which you wanted to flash and glow/ and float while I watched, earthbound.” The empathy, the understanding that small variations in our genetic makeup and chemistry can separate us, is devastating. Jonathan’s measured verse is a controlled response underlaid with pathos, yet never giving in to sentiment, making it all the more heartbreaking. “La Durée Poignardée” is named for the 1938 painting by Magritte, in which a steam train proceeds from a fireplace as a clock sits on the mantel. As surrealist works are wont to do, it gives Jonathan a moment of synchronicity as he thinks of train trips to see his daughter: “just as trains keep a schedule and lives attempt to imitate it./ Thinking of my daughter helps me keep to such a schedule/ on days I strain to maintain steam, to keep myself running.” This eloquent, formal poem is a meditation on time and how there is never enough of it to spend with those we love. Jonathan’s word music is as restrained and fine-tuned as his subject.
Read Jonathan’s masterful poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Family” issue, available 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.