Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
One of Them Will Be in You*
by Jonathan Yungkans
My mother’s shyness spread into dementia.
It grew into the Chinese Elm from our old
front yard, cracking the cement curb, raising the
sidewalk at a Dutch angle to match my last
name. Dementia filled the yard with a canopy
that, depending which season and meaning
you give to the name, stretched through spring and summer,
leaves letting moonlight, then no light past them, or
from which words dropped in autumn until there were
bare branches my father tended as he cooked, cleaned,
tucked her into bed at night, making the bed
next morning—a repetition like Adam’s
as first and only gardener of Eden,
his wish for something other than thorns and
blank stares in place of thistles kept to himself
as he felt a chill in the air, looked toward
the rapidly moving clouds. Further south, I looked
at them scudding over the L.A. skyline,
twenty-odd miles and two lifetimes away. The air
clear between hill and those buildings, blue and
sharp-edged enough to shave layers off a dream.
Sky seeming pure enough to run from a tap
and rinse what’s left from an incredulous face,
deceptive in a lie’s imperceptibly
when told right. Free of smog but not of musings
poisonous as hydrocarbons, wondering what
party’s penciled in for the penthouse between
my ears, my personal gene pool. It is too
late to learn to swim? Will adding chlorine
kill off the gatecrashing strangers my mother
saw in her yard, around the Chinese Elm?
Should I invite them over for drinks?
*Title taken from the poem “Litany” by John Ashbery, in the collection As We Know.
Appeared previously in Book of Matches, Issue 8 (Spring 2023)
Jonathan Yungkans continues typing at odd hours of the night, even as he hears owls hoot and watches yet another skunk meander beneath his house's foundation. He remains thankful when his writing is less noxious than the creature under his bathroom's floorboards. His work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Sonic Boom, Syncroniciti and other publications. He has also written three poetry chapbooks. The latest one, The Ravens Will Arrive Later, is scheduled for release in 2026 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.