The jaguar
is padded thunder stalking
through jungle canopy,
dialled in eyes like unnerving machetes;
mouth agape, a heaviest panting,
scenting the colossal air.

And many centuries away
the rolling barrios,
clay piss pots emptied over
broken cobbles.

You see, Roman Polanski wasn’t built in a day:
there was conception, fertilization,
a gestation period of form and fluid.
A process just as anything is.
Chubby walk/talk legs and a devouring milk.

And soon you are making movies.
Pacing behind the camera, a cutting room
of unforgiving knives.

And the concession stands and critics
will wait.
Like smoking longhouses that line
the teeming river.

 

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Eliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Panoply, Chiron Review, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.