Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back poet, writer and photographer Jonathan Yungkans, based in the Los Angeles area. Jonathan is the only artist to win three Synkroniciti contests (poetry, flash fiction and cover) and has been with us since our second issue back in 2019. We feature two of his photographs and three prose poems in “Vulnerable.” Asleep, Union Station, Los Angeles, 2017 and Don’t Even Try It, Rancho Palos Verdes, 2013 explore different types of vulnerability and our reactions to the vulnerable. They tell us more about our own gaze and suppositions than they do about the men pictured. The poems are all fascinating responses to the “Space” themed prompts Synkroniciti ran in September 2023 and explore personal visions that border on the collective unconscious. “Transparent in Some Places, Sometimes Opaque” imagines the self as a blown-glass vase: “The glassblower exhales into the white-hot liquid he shapes, passing something of himself into it. A bottle with my neurodivergent DNA. Flaws it receives inside a furnace.” “May Lions Begin to Pace and So Wrench Us” explores the concept of desert as a place where we are mentally and physically tested. “Lions of reproach roam at three a.m. past frosted, brown tufts of grass surrounded by sand. Seeking to devour, felt but unseen in the darkness. Lions like Satan himself.” “Unlike Most Storms It Isn’t One Until It’s Over” makes a shadowy, sinister connection between moonlight and knives. “Crimson moon between two pines. A crescent blade. Trees reduced to black outlines. Moon red as an end-of-the-world prophecy, poised motionless with a tinted edge.” Jonathan is adept at crafting these small worlds which operate by their own rules by means of connotation and rich language, worlds that are built on synchronicity.
Experience Jonathan’s vision in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” 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.