Tag: Elliot Lake

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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

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. 

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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

Poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain
Anatomy of a Strip Mall Parking Lot

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

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

Conjuring Windows

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
CONJURING WINDOWS 

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. 

.

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

A Disappearing Defeat

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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. 

.

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

Permutations by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
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. 

.

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 Rain Was Laughing Sideways

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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. 

.

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

Losing the Light

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
LOSING THE LIGHT 

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International