The island is Eneepah to the Chumash Islanders, meaning ever-changing or deceptive 

or perhaps mirage. Like the picture of California’s best view I saw online— 

the spine of Santa Monica Mountains rising from the Pacific, grey against deep blue, 
		
clouds purple bruises above them and the distant sunset gold. Nothing about 
		
thousands of squawking Western Gulls that descend for Spring mating 
		
and were everywhere the day I landed. Glaring and squawking and flying straight 
		
for the tallest person in the tour group—me—while I was doing my best 
		
to step around brown puffballs baby-stepping toward trails. Nothing 
		
about the overcast that hovered above us, a wet concrete shroud 
		
the sun pulled off us an hour or so before we were to leave—just long enough 
		
for fog to hide the scene. As if water were a mirage 
		
that became a couple hundred dolphins leaping alongside our boat to the mainland, 
		
a pod the size of which the captain said he’d never seen— 

an eneepah before my eyes, the ocean ever-changing but anything but deceptive. 

* Click for larger version (opens in new window).

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, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and is slated for release by Tebor Bach Publishing in 2020.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Lawful and Proper, poem by Jonathan Yungkans 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)