RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

WHY SLEEP IS A SPIDER WITH FANGS

The day was a forgery

so the night could get away

with stars

that is how the brain-trust remembers

turtles out of lumbering monotony shells

plodding spherical skullduggery

and a latch across the basement door

applesauce spoons used for heroin

our faithful commissioner recommissioned

to linger too long anywhere is to imitate shadows

to lay under bodies and remember the parks

of your childhood, how the parents pretended to watch

and everything else was just pretend

and later nicotine rings to joggle the mind

St. Adrian in the window standing guard;

I have left you so many times the harbourmaster

is asking questions.

 

TOE TAGS ARE JUST AUTOGRAPHS

FROM THE AFTERLIFE

I sit in the bathroom and flip through the magazines.

Everyone looks so ugly these days.  Like bank vaults after the take.

That empty look in their eyes as though the markets have crashed

and everyone has been cursed with forty years of bad sex.

I am constipated.  There was a sale on cheese and I have this thing

with dairy.  The door left ajar because there is no one else

but the cat and he distrusts anything he can’t see.

And he comes and goes as he pleases.  I have no doubt

he will eat me when I die.  And everyone will feel bad for him because

he is small and furry and beautiful and they will forget all about me.

Keeled over on the toilet like Elvis.  Trying to squeeze one last puppy out.

Knowing toe tags are just autographs from the afterlife.

Some upstart coroner from the university coming in on his weekend

landing double overtime.  To pronounce.  Make a recording.

Judging my death accidental like climbing into a blender thinking

it some sensory deprivation tank of better understanding.

The way cremation leaves itself open to smoothies.

Healthy living with someone else’s wife.

The kids on weekends under court supervision.

 

POEM FOR TWO KIDS FIXING A BIKE

I have been summoned.  There is sickness going

around and Bill has caught it.  I have brought soup

and crackers and ginger ale up many flights of stairs

and cherry lozenges and boxes of tissue with nature scenes

on them so one thinks of tranquility among the sinuses.

The bag is see through and bulging which makes me think of

the invisible man before they take off all the bandages

even though that doesn’t really make sense.  And I pass

these two kids in the hall fixing a bike.  One noticeably older

than the other who has obviously borrowed his father’s

wrench.  The younger one is relegated to holding the greasy

chain in place and his obvious reticence makes it appear

as though his fingers are sliding through a pit of snakes.

The older one is stern, he will make a splendid father

someday, barking at the young one to hold the chain

still.  And I shuffle past sideways, neither taking notice

of me.  Before knocking on a door down the hall and being

let in.  Bill is thankful, we are not as close as he thinks, but

present circumstances have foisted us together.  When I leave,

the bike is still overturned but the boys are gone which

makes everything lonely, like walking through a graveyard

counting the headstones.

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.