Monday, July 31, 2023

Keepers Meet Questing Eyes, a Leaf Garden Press poetry collection by John Michael Flynn



Keepers Meet Questing Eyes is my second book of poems published by Robert Louis Henry at Leaf Garden Press. https://leafgardenpress.blogspot.com/2014/07/keepers-meet-questing-eyes-by-john.html

Find it on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Keepers-Meet-Questing-Michael-Flynn/dp/1499641532

On Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Keepers-Meet-Questing-Michael-Flynn-ebook/dp/B00M8UFO8S

On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Keepers-Meet-Questing-Michael-Flynn-ebook/dp/B00M8UFO8S

Here is a review in Peace Corps Worldwide by author Mark Brazaitis: https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/review-of-john-michael-flynn/

Excerpted from Mark's review:

Flynn’s poems don’t aspire to be arty or clever or coy. They’re honest evocations of life, and they invite the reader in the same way a coloring book invites children in: with generosity and without pretense.

Of course Flynn’s poems are aimed at an adult readership, and their rewards lie in their directness and clarity.

And from poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, winner of the American Book Award: 

In Keepers Meet Questing Eyes, John Flynn provides us with a book of poems that explores the connections between the human and natural world, between love and loss. This is a book that engages the reader and shows us the other hidden parts of ourselves and our lives. Truly, the poems in this book are a blessing.

Thank you to artist David Nader for the images of his masks in the four window panes on the book's cover.

Acknowledgments 

These poems appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms, in the following publications: 

“The Empty Bed Of A Sixteen-Year-Old Girl” in Brevities “Gin And Post-Mortems” in Laughing Dog

 “Please Do, Artist Friend”, “At A Shotgun Wedding” in By The Overpass 

“There Will Be Renewal” in Century 121 

“Yesterday, Today, City”, “Goodnight, San Francisco” in Nain Rouge 

“Marking Time In Providence” in Interrobang! 

“Class Envy On Constitution Road” in Freshwater 

“Freight Trains Once Lanced This Ave & Unloaded” in San Pedro River Review 

“Peaks Of Otter” in Litbomb 

“Even As We Sweeten Like Molasses Rum” in Nebo 

“Dragonflies In Sunbeam”, “Breathe Until Your Light Be Hysterical”, “Karma Avenue Central”, “Nana Celia’s Recipe For The Miraculous”, “Rare Pure Listening” in HIP 

“Peasant Women Along The Road Carry Centuries” in Two-Thirds North 

“A Trio of Shells” in Umbrella 

“Some Mentor You Whether They Want To Or Not” and "Bogs And Allegations" in Naugatuck River Review 

“Seeking Wild Strawberries Along Back Roads” in YB 

“Cash” in One Trick Pony 

“Smog Cutter” in The Iconoclast 

“So”, “Kirk And Dolphy And Constant Practice” in Ibbetson Street 

“Sea Change On Route 101” in Arsenic Lobster 

“Olneyville” in Gutter Eloquence 

“Speed Drill” in The Delinquent 

“He Held On And She Kept Saying Time To Go” in Microstory A Week 

“Carnal-O-Poly”, “ModerNova” in Cacti 

“Consideration” in The Siren Speaks 

“Heath” in Leodegraunce 

“Cove Below Capitola”, “Out Of Jade”, “stoic dry serene” in Gobbet 

“One-Word Names For New Rain-Soaked Saviors” in The Dying Goose 

“So Much History In One Missing Limb” in Paterson Review 

“Suburbanites Never Come Down Here” in Tenement Block Review 

“Super Flea” in The Centrifugal Eye 

“To Cordoba, Then, Ceramic Spur” in Word Riot 

“Rolling A Hubcap Down Allens Avenue In Providence” in Chuffed Books: A City Anthology 

“Soldier At Ironing Board”, “Teenager Grappling, Chimerical”, “Seismic” in Milk And Honey Siren

 “Henceforth As Candidate For President Of The Sublimely Ridiculous” in Sacred Fools: An Anthology

 “I Woke Up And The Show Was Over”, “Metro Retro Millennial B-Girl Makes Her Way Home” in Fractal 

“The Nile For Sale”, “Wharf Rat In The Seamen’s Institute”, “Exile’s Night” in The Rampallian 

“Home Is One Corner Of A Round Room”, “Hungers”, “Soft Asphalt For Bubble Gum” in Dagda

 “Average Doughnut Three-Decker Life And Giuseppe”, “Diamond Rain” in Ginger Piglet. 

“Three Women On A Farm In Southern Missouri” in Dewpoint. 

“Mariesville” in Bareroot

A sample below from the collection


A Wedding Ring 


What I can offer as the best of me is this yes 

 that like a musical flourish crests and fades

 to free all the lambs in my constellations. 


Let’s talk of the lags that marked your adolescence, 

succulence you drew from pomegranates, 

the way you used a sunflower as compass. 


This equator around my finger speaks the gratitude I feel 

for your sullen eyes and long dark roads, 

waves we’ve left in morning sheets – 


While we lie within each other 

let’s truncate the litany of mistakes 

that shamed our fathers and mothers


as they dreamed, as they labored.

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