RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

FOR A MOST PORTLY WOMAN

in the dashing overboard night

in the common altitude of airport bathrooms

on horseback of no horse, I heard you coming

tuning the transistor to fingers

Appalachian ballads crawling down the avenues

vomitoriums to suspense and travesty

surge protectors riding hurricanes into the wall

bad breath speak for good views

around this most stationary spear-hunted moment

you climbed in my mouth

to make our

evening

wet.

 

PLAYING GOD

It was walking along Bernick Drive

all those years ago

myself in miniature, walking my bike

back to the house

with the chain dislodged

and drooping,

it was pockets full of rocks and box forts and summer

when I noticed some other kid

a little older

sitting there on the sidewalk

with a magnifying glass

burning ants into the pavement

with the sun.

I stopped and watched for a moment.

As he located the sun, positioned the magnifying glass

and waited.

It didn’t take long.

The ants would begin to smoke.

Circling in panic, then die.

The kid looked up and smiled at me:

it’s easy, wanna try?

I shook my head no

and walked on.

If there is a god or ever was, this would be him:

some sadistic bastard with a magnifying glass

putting us all through our paces

simply for his amusement.

Some murderous wretch with freckles

smoking us out with impunity.

But at the time I could not see that.

I still disliked the other kid for doing what he was doing

but didn’t know why.

When i got home

I flipped my bike over in the driveway

and fixed the chain.

The oil on my hands

washed away under the water spigot

at the side of the house.

CONTACT

She screams

from the other dimension

and I can hardly hear her

just the soft whisper

of thinning hair

and I yell back

across the heaving

multitude

into a thimble

too small

for

drinking.

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.