The horizon bleeds and the days and you 
washed me in the water of the womb before 

	there was, before I knew of water washing 
	on a beach, long before your mind was sand, 

before time washed your mind in its current 
out to sea, there was the ocean having no 

	memory, its salinity the same as 
	amniotic fluid, so forget time as 

a river but time as primordial birth, 
fluid forgetfulness, moving in and 

	out of consciousness like you did, forgetful 
	of names, faces, locations all caught in 

an undertow, pulling you to deep blue sea 
while dusk flowered, mustard and vermilion. 

*Poet’s Note:

The first line is from the poem “Portrait of the Illness as Nightmare” in Leila Chatti’s collection Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020).

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)