1
Yellow daisies bought for mourning will last another week. 
A tangerine candle burns near them, adds warmth. 

2
Wheat in Van Gogh’s painting glows molten afternoon sun. 
A Prussian-blue sky glowers while crows beat time. 

3
Ravens are absent this white morning, sun glaring cold light. 
A medivac helicopter breaks my silence and leaves. 

4
Black soil, wet as fresh concrete, sets between storms. 
Bright shoots of winter grass push between stones. 

5
Guided Rachael to the toilet, facing me, arms round my neck. 
I said this was practice for Dancing with the Stars. 

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

⚡ 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)