Our final Featured Artist is poet and photographer Jonathan Yungkans, who is beloved to our Synkroniciti community–our “Hidden” issue featured his shadowy self-portrait on the cover and he won the poetry contest in our “Birds” issue with “Only the Frozen Emphasis” which we subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. “Transcend” features two scintillating poems based on the artwork of René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist: “At the Cost of a Crisp Vagueness” is a cadralor, a poem in five distinct parts inspired by five artworks and exploring the mind’s inner spaces, touching on the fragility of sanity and the absurdity of perception, and “L’Homme au chapeau melon” delves into the human tendency to deny reality when it seems too cruel or dangerous. We also feature three evocative photographs: a pair of portal doors (“Through the Cemetery Doors” and “Early Morning Fountain”) and a “Lotus” at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
Come and experience Jonathan’s introspective work. You can purchase our “Transcend” issue, Vol. 3, No. 4, or subscribe here. The issue is now available online as of November 30th.
Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer who earned an MFA from California State University, Long Beach while working as an in-home health-care provider, an occupation he still practices. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in 2021 by Tebot Bach.