Duplex: When the Moon Rises Above the Hill

Robin’s-egg sky cracks and runs cerulean
its royal-blue yolk twilight and ocean,

rolling into night, tide deeper than thought,
broader than a slow breath and free—

free as breathing once was. Gold and silver gleam,
pinpricks buoyant as the bobbing moon.

The moon smiles wide with an unmasked face,
as if a person were ocean not sky,

a wave foaming blue-white across its face
in crash and settle, gold and silver sand—

flecks of mica, shell, sandstone settling
with the density of bone, compacting

bones of broken stars and lapis whorls
of fading breath—a robin’s egg, shattering.

*Title take from the poem “Retro” by John Ashberry, in his collection Where Shall I Wander.

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.