RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

 

The Last Wolf In Ireland

 

I spill out

of the relentless

ice pick North

like some dying

once fragment 

pine needle army

dropped on willful

napalm heads

 

and the way

people come between

each other

and their dreams

should remind us

of property lines

you’re not supposed

to cross

 

while the last wolf in Ireland

comes down off

Mt. Gabriel

 

& bloody gum disease

adventurists pull

all their own

teeth

 

on the stairs

that creak

instead of

stares.

 

 

25 Letters In The Alphabet

 

If the Vulcans are all so rational,

then why do they choose to ally themselves

with the only major power in the known universe

that can’t cloak?

 

And why do the Cardassians all look like

they just got run over by cars?

 

And doesn’t the Klingon home planet

seem like the perfect place for meathead xenophobes

to settle down?

 

Why would such a people ever venture out anywhere

if they loved their home planet

so much?

 

And what’s with Warp drive?

Doesn’t it seems as though the Warp core

is always acting up

and that a general recall should be issued

from the manufacturer?

 

Oh, and the extra ensigns,

they must have a pretty good turnover.

They always die in the first two minutes

and there are never any funeral services.

 

I’m guessing they are the garbage men of the future?

It seems shit rolls down, even in space.

 

And Troi, she feels everything so deeply.

Wouldn’t she have the best orgasms ever in the lift

or each time the transporter vaporised her cells into nothing?

 

And you wonder why no one will watch Star Trek

with you ever again.

 

Suspension of belief.

The same reason there are 25 letters in the alphabet.

 

The church never asking Y

and most the rest of us

as well.

 

 

Nitpicking Her Way Out Of The Orchard

 

She is worried

because she has taken a quiz

in one of those girlie rags

and it said that we don’t fight enough.

 

That couples that fight more have better sex

and more sex.

 

That there is something wrong with not fighting.

I disagree, but do not tell her that.

That is what she wants, the fight.

 

Following me around the house.

Nitpicking everything.

 

So the magazine will think well of her

and intercourse will last longer than a trip

to Mars.

 

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.