Ryan Quinn Flanagan: Poetry

Oedipus the Delicatessen
 
The mood was festive inside the heaving mud womb
people played instruments they could not play
so baritone dog packs could belt out forgotten
Puccini operas for the not-so-discerning ear,
children jumped out of their prams on
full basketball scholarships
the keys left in the door to repudiate Freud
and make felony burglary
that much easier,
and when I returned from the kitchen
I walked into a whole new room entirely
and the lamps had goosebumps
Act Two, Scene Three:
Oedipus the Delicatessen has just
done away with his father
and opened for
business.

 
Vision Quest
 
It wasn’t quite a vision quest so much as an ultimatum,
but my father said I had to get out,
he seemed to be familiarized with the animal kingdom
knowing any challenge to his aging authority would come
from within, and the transition was far from easy,
when I slept outside the stars were my friends
at other times there were couches and a sickly dog
to lick the balls of your feet awake each morning
with a diseased plastic cone still wrapped around its dying head,
and first your own place, then a woman or two
before the one that stays, repainting the walls to bring
some colour into your life, fresh socks as though the human foot
deserves better, and when you sit over tea you blow
it back from boil; share the stories that make us human
and vulnerable.

 
Tools of the Tirade
 
Here and there
those are the two destinations
you choose the one you want and I
will settle for the other
my tools of the tirade
anonymous insect admirations
glances in directionless directions
to upset this newest order
a cursed fellowship so grave
in its company 
that seat warmers find themselves
alone, weeping to a music that was prepared
in jest, by falsified cowboys and their
entreatied Indian lovers
the momentum of thrusting crotches
set in opposition
murals over commissioned walls
that would rather
be naked.

 
The Johnny Cash of Japan
 
It seems I am literate, the billboards are no longer
a mystery to me:
there are words and I decipher them
images fed through the Bletchley of my brain
and understood
firing squad synapses making Dostoevsky believe
he was going to die –
a cruel trick by the Czar to be sure
but it didn’t end so well for him
either –
that is the problem with joke shop itch powder,
it works on the assumption that the victim of the ruse will laugh,
and standing in line at the bank today
I realized that if I robbed the place I wouldn’t
have to stand in line any longer,
I also realized that I did not have an account there
and little monies to place in said account
even if I did.
 
Basho liked the road.
He was the Johnny Cash of Japan.
I am a homebody.
 
If I were a Black-capped Chickadee
I would build a nest of animal fur
and regurgitate into the mouths
of my many small
children.

 
You Could Make Room for Room,
but How Would You Know?
 
Overpopulated
like 7000 men standing over
a single porcelain
urinal
 
taking aim at the current system
of governance
or anything else which may
strike their fancy
 
that is how the pundits describe everything
 
going on television
like others once went
to space,
 
the only valleys that remain
are made of silicon
and retire at 25,
 
a butter blonde
hanging off each arm
like the sleeves of a tired
shirt.

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, Spillwords, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

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