Duplex Beginning with a Line by Marvin Bell

He saw himself as coal, on its way to glass,
thinning through a pane of time. Scarlatti

danced window-thin under fingers, lively
and crystalline in its sharp velocity—

the velocity of intense, crystalline light—
morning’s illusion of clarity

in a breath’s elusiveness while mourning.
He was a coal seam jacketed in rock,

the surrounding strata seeming seamless
despite sun pouring through a window

in glittering arpeggios sharp as glass.
Caught in a pane, he was passing though pain,

under diamond-forming pressure. Saw himself
though a looking glass, face speckled with coal.

Line 1 taken from the poem “Days of Superman,” in the collection Mars Being Red.

Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer whose work has appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Panoply, Synkroniciti and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published by Tebor Bach in 2021.