Restless Vanishings, a book of poetry published by Leaf Garden Press

Restless Vanighsing was the second book of poetry, out of three, that Robert Louis Henry published at Leaf Garden Press. Here is a link: https://leafgardenpress.blogspot.com/2017/03/restless-vanishings-by-john-michael.html

Here is the book's Acnowledgments page:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

Vox Poetica “Thaw At Lake Quinsigamond”

Rive Gauche “We Listened To The Baghdad Five-Day”

Sahara “Stylishly Exacting Executions Done Of Olden Times In Collaboration With Ye Of

            Faith”, “Color, Dolor, Urbane”, “Among Branches”, and “Emerald Moves Along The

            Blackstone”, “Mister Westall’s Good Knife”, “Beehive Bill”

Mothwing Arts “Of Grouse And Crow And Wild Turkey”

Interpoezia “Authentic”

Rockhurst Review “Rattling Into Compromise”

Street Sighns: An Anthology “Mulcahey’s Pub Under The Merit Sigh”, and “What I Knows Best

Is The Kenmore Dinah At 3:30 A.M.”

I-70 Review “Sea Dog On A Backyard Bender”

PoetsUSA “Average Leo, The River, And A Doughnut”

Providence Journal “Rumors Of Blues”

The Issue “Dink Pascuali Answers All Concerns Regarding The Rat Race Question”

Ibbetson Street Press “Automat, Peep-O-Ram, A Token”, “In Praise Of Boston Aunts”

Against Agamemnon; An Anthology “Lady Terrorist Slays Lady Soldier And Herself”

Somerville News “Gathering Contradictions In A Cheap Room”

Crash “Our Eyes Roamed Over Hills”, and “Roberto’s Barbershop And Overnight Trains To

            Palooka Ville”

Spillway “Monterey Dissolve”, “Passion Tension Mansion Pension”

Naugatuck River Review, and MO: Writings From The River “Big Red Sideburns”

Boiling River “Color Spectrum Thoughts On Racism At A Traffic Light”, and “In The Small Of

            Her Back Another Illusion Sets Sail”

Hot Metal Bridge “Dirty Just Got Off The Bus”

Stone’s Throw Magazine “On A T-Ride Home From Boston”

Pudding International “Flames Wiped Out Third Base Last Stop Before Home”, “Chums At The

Grange”

Journal Of Modern Literature “Of Flivver Kings And Mesmerists”

Larcom Review “Wormtown Butch Out Of Jail”, and “Constellations Advance”

Red River Review “Sunshine Dried Fuzzy Navels”

Worcester Review, and The Book Of Irish American Poetry From 18^th Century To The Present

            “Pow Wow At Greenbriar”

Kaleidoscope “The Mishe Mokwa Trail”, “Wheels And Blades”

Serving House Journal “Arboreal”, “Neo Malibu Barbie Shares Face Time With Sergeant Rock

The Third At La Tazza”

DuPage Review “Locals Label Him Disengaged And Malevolent”

Brevities #33 “Olive”

Muddy River Review “Eclipses”, “Once Said Is Enough”, “Last Will And Testament”

Clackamas Literary Review “I Was Thirteen”

Red Wolf Journal “Chasing A River’s Shadowplay”

Stone Path Review “Tonka Truck”

Dewpoint “Constancy”

Beetroot “Re-Tooled Nights And Ambiguous Yarns”

Modern Poetry Quarterly Review “Splinter, Rail, Couch”, “A Daughter’s Safety, A Father’s Patience”

Nailed “Big Light On Double Bed”

John Michael Flynn’s language dazzles to a very real end: the exploration and delineation of the free-floating breakdown known as “America.” The range of tones and locales he uses is impressive but more impressive is the feeling invested in what almost inevitably slips through time’s fingers. Anyone wondering where the Whitmanesque impulse has gone need look no further than this encompassing book.

—Baron Wormser 

Here's one poem from the collection

Big Red Sideburns

 

Seems to me that men seldom speak of what’s happened.

They speak around it. They trust the broken, silent places.

Words cheapen the muscle of what’s left to memory.

In this regard, what breathes between father and son, I wonder?

I remember at sixteen how I watched him in awe

Trimming those sideburns with narrow-bladed shears

As he prepared for the nation’s bicentennial,

The year men in Worcester County agreed to wear beards,

And some sported Kaiser Wilhelm umbrella mustaches

That would have made any local furrier proud.

The year we rode in a parade to celebrate the city

Waving from the company car all the way down Main

Into Webster Square, my brothers and me marveling

That people waved back from the tenement windows

In the city’s poorer sections and my mother with a note

Of pity called them shut-ins and downtown Worcester

Seemed full of such infirm window-sill dreamers.

Now, the yearling in me continues mining who we’ve been.

I’ve chased skipping stones back and forth across the country

Waking on this day in my forties, still not there but trying.

You are here with me, still my father, and I’m still in awe

Of those sideburns. I know well this shaving mirror.

It was yours once, and it frightens and mends.

I imagine your reflection in it, patient and unbending

Eyes, a serene stoicism, your reluctance to sound

A lot of bluster in argument, choosing instead to act

As your reflection does now, as host, telescope and lift.

Like the still hopeful regret in a hand waving at a parade

I can remember every word never spoken between us.