Just Another Kid From the Neighborhood

By John Michael Flynn

Through the use memories in relation to various settings, these poems explore the past as seen in the vanishing present. They seek to reveal and clarify the poet's understandings of self, place, and time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Michael Flynn
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005261313

John Michael Flynn

John Michael Flynn was the 2017 Writer in Residence at Carl Sandburg’s home, Connemara, in North Carolina. In 2015 he completed a one-year English Language Fellowship through the US State Department in Khabarovsk, Russia. Poetry collections include Restless Vanishings, and Keepers Meet Questing Eyes from Leaf Garden Press. (www.leafgarden.blogspot.com), and Blackbird Once Wild Now Tame translated from the Romanian of Nicolae Dabija. He’s published three collections of short stories, his most recent Vintage Vinyl Playlist from Fomite Books (www.fomitepress.com). Fomite has also published his second collection, Off To The Next Wherever. His collection of essays, How The Quiet Breathes, was published in 2021 by New Meridian Arts.( https://www.newmeridianarts.com). He’s earned awards from the New England Poetry Club, and the U.S. Peace Corps. Visit him at https://jmfbr1.blogspot.com/His books can be found from these publisher websiteshttp://leafgardenpress.blogspot.com/https://publerati.com/https://www.fomitepress.com/https://www.newmeridianarts.com/https://jmfbr1.blogspot.com/https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Michael-Flynn/e/B0C6V89VVVHere is a sample of some comments from readers:“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.”—Baron Wormser, former poet laureate, state of MaineFlynn’s prose at every turn is crisp and evocative; he has a gift for description of cities, landscapes and characters – the latter seem so real one could almost touch them. I have for years enjoyed his short stories, poems and translations, and I’m delighted he has brought his considerable powers to a wonderfully vivid collection that crackles with energy and insight.-- Geoffrey Clark, author of Wedding In OctoberThere’s something dazzling about how Flynn evokes beauty and isolation, tragedy and triumph, in language that sings and begs us to sing along, too.-- Alyson Hagy, author of BoletoThe work is concrete, seductive, and dramatic in its intensity – drawing the reader in.-- Jack Smith, author of IconFlynn is an author who pays attention to the details. Vivid and engaging, it’s a pleasure to add Off To The Next Wherever to my shelf.-- Kristen-Paige Madonia, author of Fingerprints of You

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

Blue Darkens Down Carter Mountain, In Crozet Late One Afternoon, After Sunday Dinner, That Rocker Was Her Second Church, Virginia Road in Piedmont Journal

George Bacovia On A Saturday In October in Four Ties Review

cruise-circuit soleil, fall against the air in pidgeonholes

Inevitable Size in Calliope

Ruts Of Empire in The Broken Plate

The Girl In Jeans And Waffle-Soled Boots, Another Day Falls Like A Gist Headed For A Purple Sedan in I-70 Review

At Last I, You in Lunaris Review

After Re-Reading Corso’s Bomb Outside Of Santa Fe, Hallucination Trains in Gyroscope Review,

Homage To An Avuncular Neighbor, Pumpkin Breath in Foxglove Journal.

Love will lack an object,

So will satisfaction.

Baron Wormser

from An Advent Of Paganism

Virginia Road

I drive without aim this morning after your funeral,

marvel at four-chimney manses

seen best when behind bare trees in winter.

I read the signs for Chopping Bottom and Castilia.

These Piedmont estates of privilege

don’t boast numbers but rather quirky names

that suggest a reverence for rusticity, elitism and humor.

You liked this best about them.

I approach the crossroad for Stony Point Pass.

I’m in Esmont and start to slow down, loosely so.

I cannot reach what I’m after

because I cannot reach myself.

A line has been drawn

to demand I release all that might have been,

visions I imagined we’d one day open

during flights and flickers beyond the gleam –

You lacked enough time to mellow with age

to promise others that patience seldom leads one astray.

I embrace another less hazardous image of us at sunrise,

pull over and stare down this old Virginia road.

Our place now, quiet passage I’ll visit when needed.

Not a car in sight.

The cedars lined up as windbreaks,

a split-rail fence freshly stained,

a breeze and the infinite sky.

After Re-Reading Corso’s Bomb Outside Of Santa Fe

It begins making no sense, meaning all sense

during a whimsical examination of a yucca

plant in a motel courtyard.

I imagine atomic fears sounding off in 1959.

I hear inscribed across the desert’s edges

one more oily echo willing to sell as legacy

the dust we’ve