RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

 

 

The Spadina Avenue Streetcar Is A Liar

 

I keep my hair short these days

because the wake up can be unpredictable.

Walk downtown in comfortable old man shoes

that give my feet a pass after the many aching years

of heavy brown steel-toed work clunkers.

 

Past the halal place on the corner

that promises that killing can be kosher.

Strange lettering across the sign,

so that you wonder where all your

“p”s and “q”s went.

 

And the cemetery is looking a little less flowery

with forgetfulness, don’t you know that’s where you’re

headed?  The Spadina Avenue streetcar is a liar.

 

Squirrels fucking in dark parks

like horny muggers,

no wonder the rooftop party crowd

always imagines champagne mountaineers

at elevation.

 

Grilled octopus spirals on a platter

like gastronomical Eschers

that make you wonder how many blood oranges

the Mona Lisa could stuff into her wandering

dirty girl mouth.

 

Tough Luck

 

Who cared what killed the dinosaurs?

He was tasked with finding out

what was killing the rest of us.

The smell from the shitter almost otherworldly.

All those dog-eared beauty magazines

and a chain-smoking mortician named Applewaite.

Where to begin?, Dickerson thought.

This was not the Daytona 500.

Liquor on the breath and some Vesuvius cyst

jumping out of his back.

It was that kind of toughness.

Like $2 steak from the local slaughterhouse. 

 

Ocular Handbag

 

So many eyes of Horus

in repeated purple print,

that flippant key party swingers

way she dangles that ocular handbag

over her ransom money abductor arm

while some giant AI dinosaur

just back from the thriving extinction

jumps out off a giant billboard

down in the central business district,

so first time tourists can try scare

each other with video evidence

and almost no one else

even notices its constant heavily

pixelated sloppy jalopy

presence.

 

RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

 

RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot 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, Our Poetry Archive, Setu, Literary Yard, and The Oklahoma Review.