Tag: Elliot Lake

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
Poetry

Standing in a Vineyard, Souring All the Grapes

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
They could not stop arguing.
Lobbing the most vile of accusations at one another.

At this wine tasting in Southern Ontario.
In spite of the wonderful weather.

The host trying to ignore them as he poured.

These two vipers having escaped the pit.
Now standing in a vineyard, souring all the grapes.

So that you would taste it in the bottle
when it came time to pick the harvest.

That petty jealousy that kept them at each other’s throats.
Surrounded by all those grapes 
that could not escape that overwhelming anger.

Their rancid lives infusing everything,
you could feel it! 

A sudden heavy cloudiness of sky.
No one driving and everyone sauced.

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