‘Meanderings under this long consignment of windows illumined’
Meanderings under this long consignment of windows illumined
are not enough guarantors that the bile shall stay
down where precious entrails lie
and to stop to touch the feet of icy statues
is to thumb my nose at colour-cautioned parakeets,
sharing twisting avenues with the finishing school dark
which by hazard or guess, in companies kept,
I squirrel away my thoughts under this knitted wool toque
with a little red ball on top –
the ferry from the island just back:
I can see my breath, if not shared motives,
the spears of naked trees in crisp silhouette.
‘Cloistered, enclosed in prayer’
Cloistered, enclosed in prayer,
mountain pinnacles during the rainy season.
That simple resonant gong through every
breathing moment; surrender is a sly bald mistress
shuffling barefoot through believable temples –
troupes of hungry crew cut Macaques must be fed
sure as the soul must be nourished,
wrestled back from these many milky
glitter kitty hours of weakness;
I am not a religious man, but never
doubt my faith! There is a long personal
spirituality here never once conquered
by the fleeting high horse spoils
of any passing army.
Heather Fields
More of the twisting purple dream
all the time – coming out of that forested turn
the heather fields preternatural sprawl,
a magnificent bovine-grazed distant
tilting away from the silent trumpeter’s
latch-loosened sky, sleepy primordial eyes
scattered as seeds over deep black tiling soil
in its place; a quick glance at the odometer
about to turn over to 96,000 kms,
to remember each one would be a fallacy
of lade triumphs, as if there existed a shipper’s
manifest for the soul. What I desire is an
unconquered gaze! These striking purpureal
moments once more.
Show Me a Simple Deer and I’ll Breathe My Only Fire
You never see yourself
like others see you
which may begin to explain
some of that
eternal browbeat
disconnect
you have always felt
since ambitious bounding
cave paintings
left diapers.
Pair of Morning Crows on a Lawn After the Rains
Peckish down deep in twin gesture,
this pair of morning crows on a lawn after the rains;
obvious mates, that familiar shared gait
as if talking over the old times,
but what hunger has ousted from the moment is frivolous nostalgia –
worms flooded out of earth, what a treat!
This plodding onyx alliance, never more than a few feet apart,
seemingly working as a team in all endeavours:
so this is what they have meant each time
impenetrable castle hugs trusted moat.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Kavya Kishore Magazine, GloMag, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.