Selected poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

‘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.