Philip Larkin’s ghost wanders in. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. But they were fucked up in their turn.”[2] So much for British propriety, in a black suit, white dress shirt and narrow black tie. Dad wore a clone of it for years. Larkin’s heavy black-plastic glasses remind me of Iris Apfel’s giant owl-eye frames. He should have let her do a makeover, returned in an aubergine Bill Blass dinner jacket, draped in a cape of red and green rooster feathers. Like that Spanish paisley velvet jacket raided from Dad’s closet, years after he wore it only once. “When you don’t dress like anyone else, you don’t have to think like anyone else.”[3] Thoreau’s line about marching to the beat of a different drummer. Would have grown a better garden in the dirt at the back of my mind. Mom and Dad gave me a high-school graduation card with that quote, after I’d started writing poetry in earnest. Felt like their admitting failure. Like the howling of Dad’s saw whenever he had a new project, expecting me to read his thoughts while I helped. The table saw’s whine next door reminds me of it. Rebuilding a pergola—shade to balance glare and gloom. How I’d like to clear my head, strolling the garden like Adam in his prime. Dad got on me one time for mowing the front lawn without a shirt on. Almost like he’s reading my mind, Larkin says, “Man hands off misery to man.”[4] I wish he’d tell me something I don’t know or, barring that, go naked.

[1] Title taken from the poem “Penny Parker’s Mistake” by John Ashbery, in the collection Shadow Train. [2] “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin, Lines One and Five. <[3] Apfel, Iris, as quoted my Robert D. McFadden. “Iris Apfel, Eye-Catcher with a Kaleidoscopic Wardrobe, Dies at 102.” The New York Times, March 1, 2024’ [4] “This Be the Verse,” Line Nine.

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 meander 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 Gleam, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Synkroniciti and other publications. Shadow Train.