Today’s New Verse News: OUR QUONDAM COMPANIONS PERSIST
by Jonathan Yungkans
The Human Brain, a painting by Edward Wolverton.
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Of my country and of my family I have little to say that hasn’t been either rent or splattered upon. Bone fragments and dots of brain create paisley Rorschach patterns in the fabric of my conscience. Let’s allot the dappled cotton skein to drape figures gone more statue than statuesque. Children, how you bleed. You shape garnet- and wine-colored mud pies and smear them against your faces and clothes to blend with earth, ashes to ashes, bullets to dust, all the pretty bodies going down.
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Author’s note: Title taken from the poem “The Handshake, the Cough, the Kiss” by John Ashbery in the collection A Worldly Country.
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Jonathan Yungkans juggles writing and photography with work as an in-home health-care provider, fueled by copious amounts of coffee, while finding time for the occasional deep breath. His second poetry chapbook Beneath a Glazed Shimmer was published by Tebot Bach in 2021.