Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Emphysema & the Sucker Machine

A lifetime of big tobacco
and relentless odd job
smoke breaks.
Emphysema & the sucker machine
in the end.
My grunting grandfather
in his favourite leather chair
behind me.
And that awful suctioning noise
of the sucker machine.
My tiny six year old self
seated cross-legged on the floor.
Wincing each time it went.
Staring straight ahead
at the television,
not wanting to turn around.
Too young to understanding Death.
It’s eyes all over me
and that dreadful
forget-me-not
sound.

____________

Suicide Net

The government talking heads
can’t stop saying how great
the economy is.
How everyone is happy
and thriving.
They have just allocated $400 million
to build a suicide net
under the Golden Gate Bridge.
To catch all the jumpers
plunging to their deaths
in record numbers.
They say it will take five years
to build.
Creating many more jobs
during this booming economy.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

All Those Crosses

There is a small churchyard
at the corner of Paris and Brady.

Littered with all those crosses.
Each one, with a name and date.

In downtown Sudbury.
Just beyond the Bridge of Nations.

The opioid crisis hitting this blue
collar mining community
particularly hard.

And the churchyard has run out of space.
All those crosses spilling over into
the parking lot next door.

Which has begun a legal argument
between the church and local businesses.

More crosses erected
every day.

____________

Weekend Kids

were told
to pack a bag
so their “no-good father”
could pick them up

so they could
spend the weekend
at the beach

with their father’s
new lady friend who
they were told was
“nothing like their
whore of a mother”
who would be by

to pick them up
on Sunday.

____________

Voodoo Doll Smack Around

He sticks
a needle in his arm,
tells me it doesn’t
hurt.

I guess
he doesn’t see me
wincing.

 

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

 

For Every School Shooting, There is a Swing That Doesn’t Work

It doesn’t take much to crack, does it?
Use a carton of eggs as a general guideline.
Free range to shooting range is a short walk.
I am never as surprised as everyone else.
Things are fragile as fine china.

For every school shooting,
there is a swing that doesn’t work.

Tomorrow, I have to get up early
to install a new bathroom vanity
and tub.

A paid gig assisting some guy I know.
Mostly just demolition and heavy lifting.
I leave skilled labour to the skilled.

When I get home, there will still be bullies
and boa constrictors tight as blue jeans that
no longer fit.

And a market for old tape deck nostalgia,
but never the elderly.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

 

Spilling the Beans

My parents tried to kill me,
threw me down a flight of stairs
when I was eight months old.

I had to be airlifted with a brain hemorrhage,
was given a less than 10% chance of living
by the doctors.

And when I survived,
my mother waited until I was
old enough to understand language
to tell me:
“I hate you and wish you were never born”
on many occasions.

Then she started in on my little sister.
Pulling on her hair as she combed it out
each morning, yelling at her to stop crying
like a little baby and calling her “a little bitch.”

And when I tried to protect my little sister,
my father stepped in and always
protected my mother.

Until he cheated on her
with this waitress he met at one
of his favourite restaurants.

Finally building up his asshole courage
to leave my mother and move in
with the waitress of his dreams.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Borrowed Corkscrew

She sits
on that frayed cigarette burn carpet
right beside me.

So close our tired feet
come together.

Everything bent at the knee
like a curve in the road
you ride the failing
brake into.

That borrowed corkscrew sloppy way
the cork breaks off before
we ever get to the wine.

Both avoiding the bed.
As though it is something
you can’t come
back from.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

 

If you linger, old leaflet

as though dropped from a plane,
the seasons will happen without you
if you linger, old leaflet,
out of house-mouse doorways
lit from above like an annunciation painting
littered with punched out cigarette butts,
harbourer long gone, but the habit remains,
the soles of lace-worn shoes sticking to each step
as though the waking world must learn to walk again:
run, hop, glide again…
across avenues long as family blood feuds,
these crimson lip-quivered gorings
of our frenzied bull market vendetta.

____________

In Stinks

Why does anyone do what they do,
meander move from place to place
like a family of non-stringent raccoons
searching out momentary advantage?

Blood thinner refuge
and the in stinks that have kept you
upright and at least half-feral and hungry hippo
since Tesla was killed over a lightbulb.

Since Kim Mitchell stole your patio lanterns
and some genie climbed up out of a public bathroom toilet
when you could not stop rubbing yourself
like a losing scratch ticket at a gambler’s
anonymous meeting.

The desert is sand like the beach is sand.
A red scorpion tattoo on your left forearm
to remember the sting.

That dark quiet way
the bartender lays the bottle down
in front of you and walks off
knowing all your problems aren’t going
anywhere without you.

Overhead Costs by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Jesus
is nailed
to the side
of the house
and I‘m afraid
to call the home
inspector.

If faulty shingles
and cracked siding
cost this much
to repair,
just imagine
how much it costs

to remove
a martyr.