Tag: Canada

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Poetry

Ants Have Hills They Die On by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

ANTS HAVE HILLS THE DIE ON

Egyptologists through the sand fast as busy beetles,
looking for curse rock kings with faces of apple crumble
that fall apart like the plots of ham-fisted detective 
novels on the rack; scratch-and-sniff femme fatales 
that smell like bubble gum in amber. Perspiration
from the sweat houses and bait shop wrigglers on the hook.
Infusions of blood libel and spoons of flustered custard,
that darning needle way you nose through traffic.
Machine gun nests moonlighting as electrical boxes 
and broken beer bottles in the ramshackle gutter.
“The findings, collect the findings!” I hear a surprise party
voice demand. Sounds like razor blade soup, so I refuse.
Ants have hills they die on, I see it every day.
On my way to corner convenience, bellowing out the hits
like some shoelace god in a world of knots.
And what is left behind is a hoarder’s reminiscence,
clutter to a less-seasoned mind.
You become a part of it whether you are careful 
or not, which is reason enough to take your clumsy chances.
From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Corners by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

CORNERS

Corners are a meeting place,
they hold the room together.
Spiders know this and construct their
webs there to catch the most traffic.
The masons knew this as well,
what are walls without corners, natural supports?
They provide guiding architecture like a city limits.
An artful design and definition.
Wallflowers use corners as an escape,
albeit a most temporary one.
Corners marshal the eye away from monotony,
from the sprawling of plaster monsters.
They can be storage for things less immediate.
Provide a sacred geometry put into practice.
Act as a mediating intersection between things.
You could write an entire poem about them.
Corners have become that important.
Art by Piet Mondrain (1872-1944)

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Fountain of Youth

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Fountain of Youth by Hans Holbein the Younger (died, 1543CE): From Public Domain 
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

There was a rumour going around.
Superstitions began to take hold.

Residents kept disrobing and climbing
into the water fountain.

In the front atrium of The 
Evergreen Village old age home.

No one knew how such beliefs 
had come to dominate.

About the fountain of youth
and its mystical powers.

But the nurses were busy
with the towels.

Walking everyone back
to their rooms.

And to hear the nurses talk,
you would think there was nothing
to such sorceries.

These same nurses, who after each shift,
would dip their fingers in the fountain
just in case.
From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Blue and White Nautical Pattern

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
BLUE AND WHITE NAUTICAL PATTERN 

The morning light arrives sudden as a chambermaid
upon my door, knocks lightly begging intrusion, twin straps 
of twisted suspenders coiled around an elevated hook,
and across the floor a carpet to warm the feet in curled gesture,
swearing by its blue and white nautical pattern that 
makes you think of the sea when you are nowhere near
the sequestering salt, the old-time fisherman at their cages
and manning the boning stations at the end of the pier.

I am balled up under covers many miles away, smacking mouth
of dehydration, quizzical morning breath and prying fingers gingerly
pulling sleep from the corners of early eyes.  When I roll over,
a veritable avalanche of: skin, bone, cartilage tumble with me –
and yes, muscle even though the newly awakened untensed  
loosey-goosy can hardly feel it, that charmless escape of such things
before I am again fossil-still; the womb of the mattress carrying my 
thoughtless weight.  Between sleep and wake – magician and mime. 
A slack-jawed float of apparitional silences.
From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

A Kingdom of Sunflowers

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

A KINGDOM OF SUNFLOWERS 

Let it be June, the 6th month in the calendar,
or perhaps one of the "embers" on the back end,
like a late surger at the track.  
You follow the betting lines, so you should know better.
That sudden swing in action just before post.
May as well linger in slotter's row, feeding the beast.
Sitting around waiting on the Super Jackpot.
The drink girl has three large hoops dangling from one ear.
She seems off-center, four smaller hoops through her eyebrow
on the same side.  She probably jingles when she's not making change.
Pulls this purple rescue inhaler from her pocket when she thinks
no one is looking.  Not the eye in the sky, or her boss with a voice
like a streaking dive bomber.  Let it be May, her grandmother's name.
All those hours of soda bread and Euchre. The wall of commemorative plates.
No simple diary pledge ever held so much weight!
Let it be August, a kingdom of sunflowers.
Sunflowers, National Gallery, London, (Painted in August 1888) by Vincent van Gogh, who did a series of paintings that month of yellow sunflowers. From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Categories
Poetry

Pink Angels Bursting by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Pink Angels by Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). Photo provided by Ryan Quinn Flanagan 
PINK ANGELS BURSTING 

I wonder what de Kooning was thinking
when he demolished his pink angels,
a failure of the writer most surely 
when he needs to know the mind before the paint,
like watching the smoke rings of a treasured tobacconist 
dissolved in a vat of acid: in mangled appetites,
a splintered swan failing to escape the bottom of the painting,
is that an eye by graceless clubfoot?  
A bedroom eye in fitful spasms.
Those yellow whirling knives that cleave 
and so abruptly bother   
these angels of a most personal heaven.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Carlos by Tony Dawson

Tony Dawson
                 CARLOS

My friend Carlos is an artist of some renown.
He is well-known locally for his sculptures
and life drawings. A star of the Faculty 
of Fine Art, his work is sought after
in Seville where he exhibits frequently.
He is also a character with an impish grin
that reflects his saucy sense of humour.
Janet and I consider him a lovable rogue.
He is obviously enamoured of my wife,
although he presents no threat at all
because he’s queer and is just teasing me.
Every time we run across each other,
he promises to leave me a piece of his art
with one of his shopkeeper friends
as a token of his esteem. I’m still waiting…

Tony Dawson, an 89-year-old English writer, lives in Seville and has published widely in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia since he took up writing during the pandemic.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Poem for the Glassy Eyes of a Doll

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

The cartographer of rooms maps his way through a labyrinth
of plaster and repurposed floors, smiling frame jobs and flea market 
throws, all manner of seating and cushion; quite the thing to behold, 
a formation of fire pokers which at first glace appear gathered for
warring parties, and upstairs above the clumsy creak, a writing desk
of wobbly scribbles.  The faded ink of this poem for the glassy eyes
of a doll, made in the image by makers on the make, object of 
childly affections.  Knotted hair combed out and braided, secrets
exchanged, you can see the beginnings of the gossip parlour.
Dressed in nature's spun mimicry, an inanimate gaze which fires
cruelest imagination.  If anything has begun, it must be that.
First canning to empty pantry.
From Public Domain

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

The Great Snow Shovel Fight of 2024

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
THE GREAT SNOW SHOVEL FIGHT OF 2024

We were in the middle of the winter deep freeze
when it happened.  A single comment about where (and where not) 
to pile snow.  And having been locked inside for months
and gone squirrely, neighbours became combatants with a 
single swing of the shovel.  It bounced dully off the kneecap,
but reaction was swift.  Another shovel coming back the other way,
grazing off the side of the arm.  The first shovel was then raised and extended
as if a spear in some ancient Greek phalanx.  I was up in the window
across the street, watching the entire thing.  It has since been christened
The Great Snow Shovel Fight of 2024.  I guess a few of the other neighbours
saw it as well.  I wonder if they cheered as I did when the one shovel
clobbered the other over the head and chased him up the street.
Maybe I was a little bit squirrely as well.  Rushing downstairs to plug 
the iced-over truck into the house with an orange extension cord, 
so that it had a chance of starting in the morning.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

At Large in a Big City by Allan Lake

From Public Domain 
AT LARGE IN A BIG CITY  

Beside a relentless freeway,
which is anything but free and takes 
its toll on users and non-users as well, 
‘boys’ meet for coffee at Mothers Instinct 
with no apostrophe or wives in sight. 
They’re old boys now, content to breathe 
and able to coast on Old Age Pension.
They laboured long, fathered kids by un-
leashing millions of apostrophes into wives, 
had operations via Medicare to fix things 
that could have meant never retiring. 
Considering current high price of houses 
in their suburb, they are now wealthy but 
that does not stop them breakfasting 
at home before venturing out for second 
coffees. Too late to become loose with money, 
they leave that to the next generation. 
Every boy knows what every other boy 
knows – they watch same TV shows – 
so, no serious debate. Chuckle, toss gossip, 
kid each other, talk sport while picking 
at pastries that wives wouldn’t approve. 
You’d think their lives had been one long 
joke here in big city. Sip that pricey espresso, 
chat, zone out then wander home for lunch. 
Their wives, the ‘girls’, are elsewhere for
pre-coffee yoga. They also laboured long, 
had the babies, kept every body fed. 
Fact is women usually outlive men, 
perhaps due to mothers’ instinct.

Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada, who now lives in Allover, Australia. He has published poems in 24 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International