Poetry: Selections From Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Viking Funeral
"We
should have a Viking funeral,"
I say.
Tossing my
empty in the trash
and
cracking another beer.
"How
do you have a Viking funeral
in a hotel
room?"
my wife
asks.
She is
sitting by the window
drinking
wine,
enjoying
the view from
the 35th floor.
"You
set the bed on fire,"
I say.
"Send
the bloody thing off to Valhalla,
a Viking
funeral."
"You're
drunk!"
she says.
Kicking
her legs in the air
like a
prized filly.
"Come
on, let's set the bed on fire.
I don't
think they'd mind."
"You
think Cecile down at the front desk
would be
cool with that?"
"I do
not,"
I have to
admit.
"She
seems like the type of lady
that would
box your ears if your shirt
wasn't
buttoned up all the way,
probably
eat a few of her children like Cronus,"
I say.
"You
think Cecile has children?"
"I do
not,"
I admit
with a noticeable
sigh.
Sixty Yards On A Rope
He tied
his fortunes to the local sports team,
to the kid
out of Stanford that could throw it
sixty
yards on a rope.
Sitting in
giant screen bars,
over bowls
of salted peanuts.
In his
jersey, each game day.
Running a
tab that always forced you
to play
catch up.
Hopeful
for that first win of the week.
Desperate,
really.
Everything
else had gone to shit:
the job,
the marriage, the pipes that
kept
bursting...
It was all
on the kid now.
And that
live arm
that came
along but once
in a
generation.
The
Cops Were Always the Worst
We lived
together in that house on Jane Street.
Rented
rooms on different floors.
And I
remember how she would come home
in the
evenings.
Crying
into some raggedy blanket
that had
probably had enough of her shit
over ten
cries ago.
And I was
young and dumb.
Just up
from the basement like some creature
from the
black lagoon.
“The
cops are always the worst!”
she
sobbed.
Working
these functions at the convention hall
down by
the lakeshore.
In some
black skimpy thing.
The cops
grabbing her ass in record numbers.
As she
brought them something else from the bar.
Years
later,
I knew
this other one
that
worked many of the same functions.
“Oh
yes, the cops were always the worst!”
she
agreed.
“They
groped all the girls.
Even
their wives and girlfriends laughed.”
I
scratched my naked belly
and
thought about all the cops I had ever met.
It made a
lot of sense.
“Any
girl who complained was fired on the spot,”
she said.
“The
money was really good!
No one
ever complained.”
Raise the Roof, Raise the Rent
The party
is over.
Never
really got started if we are honest,
which of
course, we are not.
And the
landlord is living in feudal times.
Raise the
roof, raise the rent.
Suckling
piggies in his own little fiefdom.
Beyond any
legal oversight.
And those
that can’t make the new number
are out on
their ass, on the skids.
Without
water or electric.
Blowing
snotty noses into a clump
of brown
fast food joint napkins.
Wondering
how they ever got here,
which may
as well be no bloody where
at all.
The
Sweet Has Gone Sour
I stand
under the net,
throwing
up consecutive layups.
Knowing
the sweet has gone sour.
As
skateboard children wheel past,
seemingly
unaware of the change.
Over
sidewalk slabs long settled.
SEE YOU
IN COURT,
a woman
screams after a man in the street.
YOU'LL
NEVER SEE THE KIDS AGAIN!
The man
moves like an avalanche,
squandering
and suffocating everything
in his
path.
I step
back
and launch
a couple free throws.
Everything
but net
from this
jerky garburator
of
inexactness.
Laces
tucked into my shoes
like a
victory plan gone
into
hiding.
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, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rusty Truck, Red Fez, Fixator
Press and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening
to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.