Origin Stories - Jonathan Yungkans

    Duplex Beginning with a Line by Paul Vangelisti* 
    by Jonathan Yungkans

    The progress of remorse and dripping faucets
    deepens a sharp-edged furrow between rocks on

              anxiety’s edge. eroding my neighbor.
              My neighbor’s forehead is where grass bleeds. It’s his

    clue I’m wasting hemoglobin, to be more
    diligent on sprinkler heads— leaky sprinklers

              an overbearing, offensive sign of grief—
              like dragging my mother’s corpse across the lawn,

    dragging her past yellow and deep-red roses
    bordering my subconscious. Thorns on his last

              nerve prick and flowers weep like paid mourners, which 
              add to overwatering and the rust stain

    down my bathroom sink, age and old galvanized
    grief in joint freefall from faucet down a drain.


      *Taken from the poem “After Ennio Correnti, 1947-1997,” in the collection Days Shadows Pass.
        Previously published in Book of Matches, Issue 6 (Fall 2022).

Origin Stories – Duplex Beginning with a Line by Paul Vangelisti

I have had a long history of using quotes as springboards for my creative subconscious. This is one of a series of poems in duplex form, inspired by quotes from other writers, which also coincided with the passing of my mother in January 2022. It combines personal grief and its potentially erosive qualities with the near-devotional predilection for outward show (in this case, perfectly manicured lawns and gardens) over sincere concern and compassion for our immediate neighbors. The two themes are combined in unconventional and surreal ways, both verbally and visually. The neighbor’s forehead, bleeding as stigmata, is associated with mown grass and lawn sprinklers. It is also linked as religious iconography to the crown of thorns placed on Jesus prior to His crucifixion and to tears shed in weeping. The duplex poetic form was created by Jericho Brown in 2018 and combines aspects of the sonnet, ghazal, and blues poem in a circular stricture, with the opening line repeated or referenced in the closing one and the closing line of one two-line echoed in the opening line of the following stanza. While I have played loosely with some aspects of this form, I have also stuck rigidly to its overall intent and to the nine-to-eleven-syllable line length endemic to the blues poem as emphasized by Brown.

BIO

Jonathan Yungkans listens to the pouring Southern California rain in the wee hours of what some call morning and others some mild form of insanity and types while watching a large skunk meanders under the foundation of a century-old house. He is thankful when his writing is less noxious than that jittery creature on the other side of those floorboards. During what some choose to call normal hours, he works as an in-home health-care provider, fueled by copious amounts of coffee while finding time for the occasional deep breath. His poems have appeared in Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Panoply, Unbroken, and other publications.