Existential departure that stretches time 
leaves on Track 29. Steel wheels glare 

	as the train glares, wheels grinding hourglass sand 
	in a knife-gleam. Passing glass-clear high-rises. 

Only thing clear about glass is its surface. 
We don’t see cracks underneath until breaking, 

	like how a moment can bend or break us. 
	How strongly tempered, glass or metal 

a person becomes—rail, line of track, glass rod. 
Molecules that can shatter upon impact—

	the life a train’s impact can twist and shatter, 
	grind and stretch in view of passengers’ windows—

steel wrung into ribbons, gems of scattered glass. 
An existential stretch of time’s departure. 

Poet’s Note:

The first line is from “(...under the knife)” in the poem “A Body of Pain,” from Ilechko’s collection Pain Sections (Alien Buddha Press, 2021).

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

⚡ Le Grand Matin by Jonathan Yungkans, a Finalist in MacQ’s Triple-Q Writing Challenge (Issue 11, January 2022)

⚡ La Porte by 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)