I play the ocean through my laptop to sleep. 
Or does it play me? Trimmed lawns roll, break, withdraw—

	illusion of breakers, jade-green with envy 
	of how waves speak. Grass blades stand, mute clarinet 

reeds, waiting for a breeze to make them vibrate, 
attempt to match the surf with a single tone 

	which fails to seduce the ear in rise and fall. 
	Verdant as grass with its jealousy, I’m root-

and virus-bound, the yard too small as waves leave, 
endless and undulant. A tide that’s a sigh, 

	a long breath toward which my mind bears down in 
	search of calm, a wish to move without danger, 

for which the sound of rollers is a beacon. 
I play the ocean through my laptop to sleep. 

* Poet’s Note:

Title is from the poem “Someone You Have Seen Before” by John Ashbery, in his collection April Galleons (The Viking Press, 1987).

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)