They’re an old married couple. A mated pair of ravens, perched close to each other on the cross-tree of a wooden power pole just after the sun breaks. Some days, they’re on opposite ends when I first see them, later wing to wing, rubbing beaks. Bickered and making up. Other days, one’s atop the pole, grooming itself, while the other minds its own business. Once or twice, I’ve caught one grooming the other. Reminds me of the time I shaved my wife’s legs at the sink. One of her legs propped on the sink edge, one arm around my waist. One of my arms around her waist, the other working the razor. I was careful. She said I didn’t cut or nick her.

* Title is from John Ashbery’s poem “Days of Reckoning” in his collection Where Shall I Wander (HarperCollins, 2005).

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

⚡ A Quartet of Prose Poems: “Answering Neruda” by Jonathan Yungkans in Issue 17 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (29 January 2023)

⚡ It Belongs to Each of Us Like a Blanket, Winner of “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge, in Issue 15 of MacQ (September 2022)

⚡ Le fils de l’homme, ekphrastic poem by Yungkans in Issue 11 of MacQ (January 2022); nominated for the anthology Best Spiritual Literature 2023

⚡ La Porte, ekphrastic poem in MacQ’s special Christmas Eve issue (10X, December 2021)

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus commentary by Yungkans on the poems and on the form, 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 by Yungkans in the inaugural issue of Gleam (Fall 2020)