Tag: Canadian

Categories
Poetry

Jericho Was No One’s Lover

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

JERICHO WAS NO ONE’S LOVER 

Musical resonance, the skeletal grind,
wheel well tumblings on a red vineyard clime –
Sardinian giant wormholes, shivering,
stuck on a what in the world island,
heaving cardamom can’t work corners,
the formation of sand and mixtape spools,
a cursory lust over the wanting membrane:
frothing, feasting, ruthlessly ensnared
And Jericho was no one’s lover,
scorned his heart for an apple-bride’s cleaver,
drove scurvy from the harbours,
devoured the worm from the bottom of the bottle,
held Man high as the oldest scar,
taunting the land with boundless shadows:
inventor of the first way 
to die.

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

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Wendy Jean MacLean

Wendy Jean MacLean
ANYWHERE PARTICULAR

“We are all indigenous to some place.” Randy Woodley


Like buttercups and daisies

my roots sprawl and spread

but don’t belong

anywhere particular.

I have tried being part of a garden

but scorn and scolding have discouraged me

from flaunting my yellow bit

of the day’s praise.

Nobody plants me.

I find my tribe in blue-weed and chicory

and the weeds

that turn the roadside

into a sanctuary.

My roots are seasonal

and ephemeral.

Like all time.

Like all space.

They belong everywhere

and nowhere.



ORION FOUND MY NAME 

Orion found my name on a genealogy site

and wrote to let me know

that our grandfathers were siblings.

I've seen him shining a million times

and never knew

we were so closely related.

Just a few generations separate us,

that, and a few billion years

of distance, across the universe.



We look for family traits.

Astonishing similarities

confirm our connection.

I ask him about the arthritis in my shoulders--

the same as my mom's and my brother's.

"Congenital," he says, "We all have it.

Being part of a spiral galaxy takes its toll

on a body, but just look

at how we shine."



 Wendy Jean MacLean is an award-winning poet with three books, several collaborations with Canadian composers. Published in Presence, Streetlight, Crosswinds, Gathering, Green Spirit, she is a spiritual director and minister.

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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

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Categories
Poetry

Poems by Ahmad Al-Khatat

GATES OF GRIEF WARMED


At thirty-four years old, I'm still experiencing psychic illness. 
Why are my grief warmed gates sealed, I wonder? 
Who made me miserable because I missed you, brother? 
I weep thirsty, but the clouds and the rain do not seem to be satisfied. 

From my depressed expression, the candle learns to cry. 
Your perfume teaches my depressed face to read poetry.   
Your fragrance learns to fade without getting in my way. 
My habits of smoking and consuming alcohol have caused 
damage to my throat. 

Using brutal chains of no mercy, accept me for who I am. 
I don't have the right to wish for dreams like the previous  
children that passed away. They passed away without leaving a  
name, having learned the meaning of both love and war. 
As though angels of God. 


GRADUATION PARTY  

Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad 
were three of my most powerful pals. 
They each had a flower in the vase and 
our enemy destroyed all the vases and  
stole all their flowers. 

I recall their parents having inscribed. 
their names on their two arms and legs. 
Just to be able to track them down after 
graduation party. We often forget about 
our assignments because of armed troops. 

"Evacuate, damn it!" they yelled at our door. 
Ignoring the agony of an empty stomach, 
Ignoring the stillness, Ignoring the absence 
of our grandfathers, who taught us to live 
and die for the soil and air of free Palestine. 

We buried our hopes behind the fig and olive. 
trees because we wanted to live, to love, 
and to be free of the vocabulary of callous 
conflicts that neglected mankind. 
Nonetheless, we are still magnificent bare trees.  

Together in the moonless night, 
we prayed then slept in peace until the graduation 
began to draw closer and closer with 
daggers in our hearts, bullets screeching towards 
our chests, missiles burst at the conclusion
of the party.

We were picked up by one of our parents. 
many hours later. Whether you believe it or not! 
We're all in the same bloody coffin. We wonder. 
whether when the people of the globe cease turning 
our reality the other way, they want to deafen both ears
and blind both eyes. 


UNTOLD HABITS 

During the present genocide, 
we learn of untold habits. 
My father comes home sad with 
an empty grocery bag, 
which is more than a routine. 

My mother often tells us to  
wash our hands and occasionally our bodies. 
She pretends to prepare, 
places our empty and shattered dishes, 
and then sobs alongside my father. 

Then we all say bismillah 
before we eat and Alhamdulillah's after 
we’ve finished licking our empty fingers. 
We then listen to my parents' prayers as  
we elevate to the skies.

Ahmad Al-Khatat is an Iraqi Canadian poet and writer. His poetry has been translated into other languages and his work has been published in print and online magazines abroad. He resides in Montreal, Canada, now with his spouse. 

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

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
DANGERMOUSE




There is a metronome in the next room,

knocking against felled coconuts;



The body has parts like a salvage yard 

has parts, like the miniseries hacked up

into televised segments that beg you to

watch the exhibitionist whirl his dervish; 



hairy and monstrous, father just home 

from the bars…



Let the Dangermouse know; 

it is wise to be informed –



strafing metal birds and a cradle robber

recruiter to work the malls; expired 

coupons never come to collect,

this sourest of science.



Dentistry calls the canines, Marathon

comes a running, the rolling ecstasies,

the raffish unfallowed.



Destiny, the unopened suitcase.

Diving metal birds, the body in parts –



weeping linen closet, little Dangermouse  

knows it’s coming:



cover your eyes mouth toes:

a great biting frost returns to these

wailing unmeasured lands.

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

Purple Deadnettle, at the Foot of a Failing Rockface 

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Purple Deadnettle, at the Foot of a Failing Rockface 
 
I turn that corner, towards the galloping glue factory homestretch,  
stumble upon this wild patch of purple deadnettle,  
at the foot of a failing rockface, run calloused sweat fingers 
down the side of fresh barber craft, hair off the neck like the oily  
gallivanting gallows given a stay in the bottom of the slimy  
eleventh and the UV warnings are out in numbers  
like idiot storm troopers so that agoraphobia  
is the new 30 – 
the bugs don't bite any more than the relentless taxman  
and everything leaves its mark if we are honest, 
which of course we are not, so that the lie is fed and grows 
large as some less than panicked Godzilla-stomped city  
taken right out of the movies and given some sorry phonebook  
name that anyone could call by mistake, so that fear is the crutch  
of the dreaming bed head Man brought to wake.

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

‘Seeds Fall to the Ground’ 

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
‘Seeds fall to the ground, something grows’ 

Nestled so close to harpied shore, 
seeds fall to the ground, something grows – 
what has been replaced, never in true replica, 
it is but for these small changes that that I find myself 
ambered in thought, wrenched mandibled and Langoliered 
as if the thick black ledger has gone to town and left a deep flush  
pulsing to be felt by personal agitators; if I seem pensive, 
know that the millwright has never been the machine, 
these oats of a ponderous farling… 
And see how the diving gulls parry, 
the many deboning stations along fisherman’s wharf 
lost to scaler’s ardour; 
a heaviness overcomes me that is no simple sleep, 
never suffocating, so much as revelatory: 
imposter fish, locksmith, birth mother…  
Everyone is in the service of someone. 
Even if that service is  
of the Self.

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
Notes from Japan

The Year of the Tiger Papa

By Suzanne Kamata

Courtesy: Creative Commons

When I returned to the university where I teach at the beginning of the year – the Year of the Rabbit in Japan — my Canadian colleague and I greeted each other.

“How was your winter break?” he asked me.

“Wonderful!” I told him about how both of my children, who have finished school and left home, returned for the holidays. We’d enjoyed feasting on traditional foods and lazing in front of the TV. “And yours?”

He rolled his eyes. “My son is studying for his high school entrance exam,” he told me. “It was so-o-o stressful.”

How well I remember those days! I think of the year that my own son faced that all-important test, the one that would supposedly determine his entire future, predicting what college he would enter, and then what kind of job, as the Year of the Tiger Papa.

You have probably heard of “tiger mothers” or “education mamas,” stereotypical Asian moms who push their children to succeed academically. Although after having lived in Japan for 23 years at that point I felt that I almost qualified as an Asian mother, no one had ever called me by either of those names. Of course, I wanted my children to do well in school. I was a good student myself, and I was well aware of the value of a good education. However, during PTA meetings, when other mothers were begging the homeroom teacher to assign more homework, mine was the lone voice lobbying for more recess.

Then, my son became a third-year junior high school student. I’d heard that in Japan everything gets put on hold while the kid in question prepares for the all-important high school entrance exam. Since I didn’t have to take an exam to get into my American high school, I really had no idea of the preparation involved. I deferred to my Japanese husband, whom I began to refer to as Tiger Papa.

During the long school holiday, I proposed a family trip to the United States.

“No, “ Tiger Papa said. “Our boy needs to study.”

“Can’t he study while he’s on vacation?” I asked.

Tiger Papa was doubtful. “He needs to study for ten hours a day. Plus, there’s cram school.”

“Well, okay.”

There are many debates about how many hours kids should study, and which country has the best educational system, but we live in Japan. For our kids, success in school meant doing well in the Japanese school system. If our son was willing to study ten hours a day to get into the high school of his choice, then I wasn’t going to stand in his way.

During the end of the year cleaning, my husband and daughter and I washed the windows and polished the floors while our son was holed up in his room with his books. He didn’t have time to hang out with his friends, but he was exempt from all chores. Occasionally, I would bring a cup of hot chocolate to his room.

On the morning of his entrance exam, he sharpened his pencils, strapped on a watch, and rode his bike to the high school where he sat for a five-hour exam. When he came home, he smiled for what seemed the first time in weeks. Come what may, his year of studying was over. I made his favourite soup to celebrate.

“It’s your turn to do the dishes,” Tiger Papa said afterwards. “And then you can clean your room.”

(And yes, dear reader, he got into the school of his choice.)

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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