Dad was a horse / he could’ve been Boxer from Animal Farm / who believed working harder / or smarter / could solve every problem / worked as a stable hand growing up / worked doctor’s hours running data processing / running big mainframe computers as they crunched numbers / but he would’ve smelled the glue-factory truck that came for Boxer / found a way to avoid it / and for that Dad was Paladin from the TV show Have Gun Will Travel / using his brain more than his gun / Dad wore Paladin’s black cowboy hat outside / and people asked for his autograph when he and Mom were on their honeymoon / because people thought he was Richard Boone / so I thought about Dad / when I came across a book about Operation Cowboy / about Old Blood and Guts Patton / who was Dad’s favorite general / sending troops to save the Lipizzaners from extinction at the end of World War II / a line of white horses that looked like they were walking right off the cover / looking at the reader with dark eyes that knew they were more than words on a page / away from a distant tree line / a few soldiers / a tank / in a story that was Boxer and Paladin and a whole lot more / right up Dad’s alley / I ordered a copy from Amazon to surprise him /

Dad called me when he got the book / asked what was in that package before he’d open it / when I told him he said to send it back / we agreed he could borrow my copy but he never asked me for it / was he telling me that horses were his metaphor not mine / that I was traipsing in on him and Mom getting ready for their first ride together / a reversal of that Twilight Zone episode / when the son all grown up goes back and meets his father and the father tells him that he shouldn’t be there / it’s the son’s summer when the son was a boy the father tells him / let it be the boy’s summer / only substitute father for boy / so I had to let those horses be Dad’s horses / let him and Mom go on that ride / as I watch Have Gun Will Travel reruns over morning coffee / as I read that book again / Ghost Riders / its cover art by Ghost / those white horses walking toward me / and hoofbeats echo from Mom and Dad’s ride / silences between those hoofbeats that Dad never filled / other than leaving me with Boxer’s urge to work harder / and Paladin’s skeptical keenness / gazing without blinking / asking what goes together before taking something apart / looking deep into those horses’ dark eyes as they approach / realizing / in their wordless way Dad was also a horse / staying at my side / nudging or neighing from time to time / and nudging / always noting but never not caring

Jonathan Yungkans

is a writer, photographer, and native of Los Angeles who holds an MFA degree in Poetry from California State University, Long Beach (2019). His poems have appeared in Anastamos; Book of Matches; The Ekphrastic Review; Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor; Gyroscope Review; Heron Tree; The Mackinaw; MacQueen’s Quinterly; NOON: journal of the short poem; Panoply; San Pedro Poetry Review; Silver Birch Press; Sonic Boom; Synkroniciti; Unbroken: journal of prose poetry; West Texas Literary Review; and other publications. His photographs have appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Silver Birch Press, and Synkroniciti, among others.

Yungkans is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Borrowed from Heaven (MacQ Books, May 2026) and The Ravens Will Arrive Later (Gnashing Teeth Press, March 2026). His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer (Tebot Bach, 2021), won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize.

During what some choose to call normal hours, Jon works as an in-home health-care provider, fueled by copious amounts of coffee, while finding time for the occasional deep breath.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ all the horses, poem by Jonathan Yungkans in MacQueen’s Quinterly aka MacQ (Issue 32, June 2026)

⚡ And All Our Wasted Time Sinks into the Sea and Is Swallowed Up Without a Trace, ekphrastic prose poem by Jonathan Yungkans, after Symphony of Night by Leon Lundmark, in Issue 26 of MacQ (January 2025)

⚡ Only a Poodle Separates This Life From the Next, a prose poem by Yungkans in MacQ-20 (September 2023); nominated for the anthology Best Small Fictions 2023

⚡ A Quartet of Prose Poems: “Answering Neruda” in MacQ-17 (29 January 2023)

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

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

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus commentary by Yungkans on the poems and on the form, in MacQ-10 (October 2021)