Coronation Scene with Hard
Water
Show me to my
room, good sir!
Show me mouse
droppings instead of mercy.
Let me die in this
room and decompose
rent free.
Nevermind the
smell, I am trying out something
new that is not
living.
Is that my bed
then?
A little paltry in
the pillow, I must say.
But we all have to
start somewhere.
A fog over the
window so thick
no light can
penetrate
my arrival.
***
My Eyes Give Away Door Prizes
Each Week
My eyes give away
door prizes each week
which is another
way of saying they reveal
too much and that
I should never play poker.
Have you seen the
sociopaths who play that game?
Tapping the table
coolly as though they control the weather.
Seemingly
impervious to everything.
Most of it is a
bluff, of course.
But I care too
much.
And I don’t ever
want to lose that.
Certainly not over
a game
of poker.
***
Greedy Fog Light Scavengers
Eating the Mystery out of Anything
I pull a book off
the shelf and examine the spine.
The glue has come
apart so that the book seems to be
running away from
itself. There is a tear at the bottom
that makes me
think of long gravel archways in the dark.
Greedy fog light
scavengers eating the mystery out of anything.
A chattel of dogs
lost to distant bark.
The personal
instrumentation that goes into nights
at the
symphony. Everyone dressed to be seen
with
sticky ludicrous
fly paper hair. The jewellery so gaudy
you would swear in
came from a wax museum.
And the must of
the book is in my sinuses now.
My nose begins to
run down my face with nothing
but the back of my
hand to stop it.
Old bookshops
always do this to me.
The allergist
tried to warn me but I cancelled my appointment.
Perhaps I divined
that he would tell me to avoid old bookshops
and I knew it was
just easier to avoid him.
To pull any book
off the shelf that I like.
To read an old
dedication scrawled in pencil
on the flyleaf and
know that something can be cherished
if only for a
night.
***
Fertile Crescent Finish
I saw you
somewhere over Sumer
rubbing the oils
of your fingers
over a sprawled
flooding Indus
I saw lazy bronze
gods
planning
earthquakes down
to the bedroom
I saw your
necklace
forged over fire
and scribes taking
orders
from the stars
I saw water over
flesh
dimples in the
bathhouse
things forbade
by those who
forbade
them
a way of thinking
that predates the
mind
in the arms
of ridiculous
cuckold
embrace
I saw how leaves
fall from trees
like empires.
***
Orphan Dancer
GET THAT NEEDLE OUT OF YOUR ARM!
she yells
unaware that this
here is not
a needle at all
but rather a tree
which has begun to
sprout up
or better yet a whole
new arm
you can never too
many of those
and the way she
keeps yelling makes
me think her some
blaring megaphone
of
rambunctiousness
I shall pick up
and speak into
when I am good
and ready.
***
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, Word Dish, Cajun Mutt Press, Red Fez, Under The Bleachers, and The Rye Whiskey Review.
His personal website is: http://ryanquinnflanagan.yolasite.com/