It is not in a door to be querulous but to wish, 
varnished at a lintel, despite what it becomes, 
to persist being rooted. Like dawn’s quiddity, 

caught in moon’s fading image—a yearning 
to transcend going back and forth. It’s ocean, 
turquoise and azure, streaming in the wood’s 

quandary, nothing retained in a balustrade’s 
gleam—bone-white enamel traded for leaves. 
To cerebrate in circles, just as tide journeys, 

clear as the sky while the line blurs to almost 
not be present—the conundrum of a doorway, 
caught in the nature of our passing through it, 

passing doves which querl themselves green 
inside a verdant bird of paradise at the door—
as if Paradise were a door and would outlast 

wind and wave and wavering wall. The turn 
of a word is a key which works the tumblers 
in a mind, a heart, what door can be locked—

and the door solid and resonant despite itself, 
much like us. We note the varnished surface, 
the grain’s persuasive touch along fingertips, 

stopping to linger upon the quadrivial nexus 
of sea, salt air, and memory scattered in sand 
amid the residual, brittle vestiges of stillness. 

—One of 12 Finalists in MacQ’s “Triple-Q” Writing Challenge

Publisher’s Note:

Le Grand Matin (Early Morning) (gouache on paper, 1942) by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte (1898–1967) is held in a private collection.

An image may be viewed at Rene Magritte: Biography, Paintings, and Quotes.

Jonathan Yungkans

is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in February 2021 by Tebor Bach.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ La Porte by Jonathan Yungkans in MacQ’s special Christmas Eve issue (10X, December 2021)

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus author’s notes on the poems and on the form, by Yungkans in Issue 10 of MacQ (October 2021)

⚡ Lawful and Proper, poem in Rise Up Review (Fall 2020)

⚡ Cadralor in the Key of F-Sharp as It Cuts into My Spine, in the inaugural issue of Gleam (Fall 2020)

⚡ I’d Love to Cook Like Hannibal Lecter [video], read by the poet at an event sponsored by Moon Tide Press (10 October 2019) celebrating the anthology Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror

⚡ Saving the Patient, poem in The Voices Project (18 January 2018)