Tag: Ontario

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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

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

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