Poetry: Ryan Quinn Flanagan

5 Poems 

by Ryan Quinn Flanagan 

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 Half in the Bag
 
A single brass antique candle holder,
the top protruding out of a passing floral patterned
purse that rushes by in a hurry,
she must be late the same way pregnancy scares
are late, rushing around in flushed chubby panic
like that; with the bottom part of her new
brass candleholder half in the bag
slung over boney shoulder…
I can only see the top, 
the various arms in need of dusting;
not quite Menorah or octopus,
but enough arms to do the job
which is all any of us can really ask for
on this living breathing Earth.

 

Couch Potato
 
Rippled chip
with artificial flavour
between the grooves,
no longer complete,
but a mere fragment
that has fallen away
down the side of the
couch cushion
 
only to be discovered
like penicillin
sometime later
 
when the couch is
being vacuumed
and the cushions are
removed
 
revealing many little
treasures,
 
some of them chocolate
that have melted into
the aging fabric
and smell.
 

 
The Closure of Airspace Just Above Your Nose
                                                                
Fees
ability seems more
about payments
than it does any leaning
grimacing financial
reality.
 
Planes
falling out of the sky
like only child birthday
confetti.
 
Over exposure cameras
posing for pictures
in the good name of careful
cruise control celebrity.
 
Chlorine pools
and three purebreds 
named Asia.
 
The closure of airspace
just above your
nose.
 
What I love about extremes
is that they’ve never heard of
the middle.
 
The way it grows soft with age.
How those under the knife never once
think of Caesar.

 
Catching Zs
 
I am out in the backyard with a large fishing net.
Lying in wait.
It’s all about the quick twitch, muscle memory.
Acting without thinking at all.
 
Suddenly leaping out from the cover
of the treeline.
 
Running across the yard and tossing the net.
 
Then pouncing down on the net with my knees.
Catching Zs.
A few squirm for the edges of the net,
but I close them in.
 
I can’t see the Zs, but I know they are there
because I sleep so well these days.
 
In black tartan pyjamas
that show off my nothing
to no one.

 
Pig Out
 
The rest are still in the enclosure,
but one has escaped.
 
It could be one of Orwells.
I can’t be certain.
 
The farmer is angry.
The truck to the slaughterhouse
will be here for loading
in less than an hour.
 
All the pigs are numbered
with spray paint.
 
He is one short.
 
I am enlisted to aid in its recapture.
But I don’t try too hard.
 
We always cheer for the escaped prisoner,
never the warden.
 
The farmer’s wife is in his ear so often
you’d figure she lives there.
 
Tending to her garden of wax.
One pig short.
 

Bio
​Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Sacred Chickens, Setu, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
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