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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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.
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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.
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It begins with that angled sidewinder of yellow curbing,
a planned pile of artisanal rocks at the base of a rounded shrub,
and spaces for all the cars, you can count them if you want,
more yellow lines that match the leaves of the trees in season.
And that chipmunk fighting with a crow over unseen bounties
while a bushy black squirrel runs under parked cars
across from the large soapy windows of the car wash place that keeps everyone looking their best.
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
The parried birds escape the sky and the splintering sun illumines the stained-glass windows of the church, breathing richness into all: busied heart, tasked hands, a man of unknown guides, come to things with eyes of marvelous child's zeal, for those colours that haunt as ghosts once did, brilliant blues and chasing yellows.
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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A Street in Winter by Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924). From Public Domain
A DISAPPEARING DEFEAT
I have been that very stooped man in disappearing defeat, an indiscernible plaque by the darkened doorway in Jakub Schikaneder’s A Street in Winter, you can feel the bone-cold of that marvellous Czech oil, that lone arching streetlamp passed with vague notice, lights in the upstairs windows, you wish you could be those people still inside with a familiar warmth, the twisting naked branches and a stilted water tower in the near distance. Once you turn the corner and stumble out of view. I know that man, I have made that walk a million times. A fresh patch of snow crunching underfoot with each bulky routed step.
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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Sitting up, unconjured by thoughtless easel, a turpentine painter runs through all the permutations of light and license – the early sunrise crawling his curtains with sleepless termites; this is how the unrendered morning will appear to proxied bothered mind, precursor to eager foot traffic by hours.
It is said to be quite unhealthy to stew in the quicksand of one's own thoughts, to wander as doddering widower might, muttering gibberish before a return to prolonged silence: Washington Square had its own hanging tree, an old execution ground long before it became the Village.
And one may feel ghosts upon shivered nape, but never see them. Never know them like the neighbourhood bodega*, that smell of simple courage. The binding of someone not named Isaac.
*Small neighbourhood shop
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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Rain-Auvers, Painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). From Public Domain
THE RAIN WAS LAUGHING SIDEWAYS(2)
Looking down into the box, back on everything, back through that wonderful maze of things.
And it seems that the rain was laughing sideways.
Pernicious alligators climbing up out of New York bathrooms.
Though I have never been the way of that buxom bridge.
Not once across the fancied millennia.
It's more of a faraway thing. The teeming thunderous clap.
An inner drive to ceremonial drums, can you see it?
Back through through the alluvial plain with a walking stick of hungry crows.
To stand over dirty shave water with that new face.
To smile like a king of many well-kissed things.
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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The humming Coke machine, and I have lost the light. The driving rains outside, and a most terrible truth. The swelling of wet cardboard and that whoosh of darting high beams by the curb. And tucked inside the asbestos house, I watch ceiling particles come to rest on the floor tile. Leaning back in a chair made to brave its own hind legs. A coke from the machine beside me, half-flat and half-finished. The mistrustful eyes of the shop proprietor all over me. I want to tell him the succubus train left her kisses three stations ago, but he wouldn't understand. I want to keep him apprised of any sudden menu changes. I want him to know of that Russian who made X-rays into records and smuggled them to the masses. Paid the hospitals for the discards, and handmade them into bootlegs of all the best banned American music. I want to show him all the strange patterns on the soles of my shoes, but the gophers of the earth have dug holes throughout my body. A tiny troll with purple hair, taped to the back of the register. And $1.50 slices of lukewarm pizza under glass.
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
Coffee bean on the floor split down the middle like surgical ward incisions, who put you all the way down there, friend, as if starting a long climb from the foot of a volcano? You should feel lucky in many ways to have escaped the grind, your humming dark roast brethren were not so lucky. Now, the house smells kind as candy. Stained lip of a personalised mug. Coffee bean on the floor I will pull up my socks, kick you under the fridge so we can both go into hiding.
(First appeared in BlogNostics)
You gotta be rich to die there
The rich and famous don’t even croak the same as us. They have their own place. The Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital.
With plenty of generous donors. George Clooney is one. You gotta be rich to die there.
I guess the celebs see the others at the end and figure it prudent to kick a little cash that way for when it is their turn.
They have a stipulation that you have to have worked “actively” in the film and entertainment industry for at least two decades.
Then you get to be special. Die with original Picasso’s adorning the halls.
I’d imagine their bedpans are solid gold. But Death being what it is, they never stay that way for long
(First appeared in Terror House Magazine)
Marcel Duchamp’s Snow Shovel
Last time I checked they didn’t get a lot of snow in Israel, but they have Marcel Duchamp’s snow shovel there with an inscription that reads: Prelude to a Broken Arm, 1915. I think ole Marcel would have quite a good laugh if he knew his snow shovel was stored in the Holy Land. Seems like the kind of thing you may want to store up in these more arctic of temperaments. I have two snow shovels and the Holy Land isn’t asking for either.
(First appeared in Poetic Musings)
About the Book: This is a collection of recent poems by Ryan Quinn Flangan. He writes on daily lives of people with a fresh pen and a soupçonof humour.
About the Author: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Rusty Truck, Borderless Journal, Evergreen Review, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash and The Blue Collar Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
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Borderless 