The cars line the street like curbed turtles spuddling with inertia, sketchy bellhop flies working the door in teams.
And the don has left the family. Breaking your heart was easy, hardly a crime of note.
Watching those lost auburn curls drop down past your shoulders with a theatre curtain fini.
To an angel’s dancing calm we go, to places unseen, early glories: silt songs of the whaling deep.
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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She died last week and the family convened to box up all her things: a few jewelry box keepsakes, the new-fangled salad spinner from eight birthdays ago that she could never work and refused to use, that blazon of 50 little angels on the mantle, hands clasped and eyes ascended in silent porcelain deference; a small army thrown into boxes, taped up and sent to storage, so the landlord could list the place in the papers the following Tuesday, champion an eat-in kitchen and proximity to public transit.
(First appeared in Rusty Truck)
A Giant Bear Jumps Up the Rockface Outside Sudbury, Ontario
You never realize how helpless you would actually be if the cards came calling.
A giant bear jumps up the rockface outside Sudbury, Ontario. A single leap up over twenty feet after sprinting in front of my truck.
Across three lanes of traffic. Those powerful hind legs digging claws deep into billions of years of solid Canadian Shield.
Power windows don’t seem so great after that. We have a long way to go.
It was just a moment, but it was everything to me.
Why anyone would count carbs after that seemed completely farcical to me.
I was in control of nothing. And all the power steering in the world could not help me with that.
(First appeared in Setu) Foreclosure Town
What the level of hand soap was at when your brother died.
I would never forget that. How many rings were failing the shower curtain.
How many tubes of toothpaste were left in the pantry, were all the labels facing out?
That is the difference. I remember everything.
How the air felt against the side of my nose as the wind picked up.
Peeling railings on my fingers.
Those careless brown flecks with the orange underside. How nothing seems to get everywhere.
(First appeared in Rusty Truck)
About the Book:
“Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s These Many Cold Winters of the Heart begins with an epigraph from Emily Dickinson “I am out with lanterns looking for myself,” a perfect depiction of this collection. You will be riveted from the opening poem, “I Grew Up in a Brewery Town,” where the Molson plant closes down but “people survived, they usually do” although “everyone had to pay for their beer now/and they were drinking more than ever” to the powerful “wonderful bloody magic” in “The Butterfly Hunter” near the end. Flanagan has no shortage of acute observations on everything from a humorous pair of crows and the homelessness of tents in winter, to Bob Dylan and Lawrence of Arabia. A plentiful array of humorous, everyday usually irreverent pieces, also stunning moments of awe, and sometimes addressing tough subjects without flinching, from unexpected violence and death, to family mental illness, the loss of a brother, and the suicide of a childhood friend and an uncle and its after-effects. These latter poems will sneak up on you and take your breath away….I highly recommend These ManyCold Winters of the Heart and look forward to having the book in hand. Susan Ward Mickelberry, author of And Blackberries Grew Wild.” (From Susan Ward Mickelberry Reviews).
“Ryan Quinn Flanagan walks us through daily life in These Many Cold Winters of the Heart. ‘This is no simple dirty ditty[.]’ The moments he captures come running off the page like a giant bear ‘A single leap up over twenty feet after sprinting/in front of my truck.’ He explores death, work, and all the minutiae of life somehow knowing how all the pieces fit together…” Karen Cline-Tardiff, Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
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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‘Brand loyalty, loyalty to the brand is paramount’
It starts early, like learning to walk or sucking that soother into milked oblivion. As soon as the senses have been developed and primed: ‘brand loyalty, loyalty to the brand is paramount,’ say it with me as though we are trapped in an Orwellian elevator counting the floors we are told are rushing by, but never witness. And what stays with us is always the invasive species, latching on, building appetites and limits, destroying potential. Replacing creator with consumer, what a slippery little eel of a trick! Slogans instead of sentiments truly felt, products and their placement. Armies of jingle writers and focus groups that dwarf any once great Napoleonic offering. Revenue streams no longer those idyllic little fishing holes your grandfather took you to on weekends, in secret. When the sun across your neck and arms and legs felt like a strengthened reprieve. And what bounced off the water was some marvellous simple truth revealed, if only for a moment and to you, who by chance, was born again.
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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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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The old man and the sea, painting by Anne Weirich (Public Domain)
Of all things comprised, my unwitting alibis –
cove familiar shoulders in hunch, a mortuary stillness,
whale song across a darkened harbour,
the ghost of old pipe smoke through a ripened air
and rattily seated upon this chair, this porch,
a man of great age and weather;
a bottle of scotch and a single malt glass
on a nearby table – the roaming vicissitudes;
no pining gallant plight, no hands of shared warmth,
just a language so bare and true
as no man will be incited,
no love startled back from the breathless
unmoved depths.
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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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.
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‘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.
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Crest not bade me soul – not a more perfect sentence in the
language. Tops! The pinnacle! I wasn't there yet, for the crest had
not bade me. The shoulders of my shirt cinched down between
drowsy hanging arms, revealing a scraggly dark patch of chest hair.
If there were gifts left to give, they would come by those splintered
brazen workbench hands. Unshuttered windows, that briny
squawking clime of distant sea air. Great parapets of lost concealments.
Bilging heels gong-rung together in startled splay.
Suddenly, like banshees wailing across the moors – it came!
"Christ hath bathed my soul," the beautiful voice sparkled. I looked
up from the pew to find a priest standing over me. Cherub-faced
and nipper drunk. A smile like fresh linens. A great light! – "Crest
not bade me soul," I muttered inaudibly. His way was fine too
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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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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A carving by Indigenous artist Garrett Nahdee was installed a year ago on 18th November 2021 in the Legislative Chamber of Canada’s Ontario Assembly amidst fanfare and widespread media coverage. What could have been the significance behind this much publicised event and the sculpted panel being given a place of prominence above the chamber’s main door?
The panel, called Seven Grandfather Teachings, are a set of guiding principles that give people the tools for how to live a good life. They form an integral part of the oral traditions that have been passed down for thousands of years, and from generation to generation, through storytelling and ceremonies of the Anishinaabe and other indigenous communities that were the original inhabitants of much of the traditional landscapes of the Great Lakes region of Ontario. Illustrating the Seven Grandfather Teachings, the carving is meant to give symbolic representation to the indigenous people of Ontario, to honour and acknowledge their historical and cultural contribution and to build bridges of reconciliation and understanding between communities.
In a broader sense, however, these ancient teachings embody a philosophy of life that is universally relevant and one wonders if the wisdom of the elders could serve as a panacea to soothe and heal the ills that plague our world today. If followed and put into practice together and as a whole, could they pave the way for a happier, healthier and more harmonious world order?
Garrett Nahdee, who grew up in Walpole Island First Nation, a Anishinaabe reserve in southwestern Ontario, is not only the creator of the carving, he himself is a firm believer in its teachings. According to him, for the teachings to be meaningful and effective, change must begin with the individual. “The Seven Grandfather Teachings are great leadership traits, and when they are practiced in everyday life, you will see changes in your life. Burdens will be lifted, and bitterness will deplete, uplifting your spirit to soar to another level of progress.”
Saeed Ibrahim is the author of two books – Twin Tales from Kutcch, a family saga set in Colonial India, and The Missing Tile and Other Stories, a collection of 15 short stories. His other writings include newspaper articles, some travel writing and several book reviews.
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