Turning Dials

You can bleed out in the heartland
and never find a pulse,
turning dials on odd contraptions
that almost turn themselves,
dustbowl feathers for the screeching Thunderbird
of myth, this sorry welling of brackish bail water,
silly corn maze competitions where no one ever wins
and this homely bramble bush woman
standing by a long-cracked window,
her hair up like a personal laundry line,
that lumpy oatmeal cold of an unshared bed,
dripping faucet from adjoining bad breath hovel –
falling out of love, out of tow job repo cars
dragged out of this dying garden.

Commensurate

All this talk of proportions and not a single usable
scale in sight; not coral-worn under the glance-a-lot sea
nor forsaking this long grand laze across galloping lands –
if I were a betting man, I would lose it all to the house
and move in under an assumed name, charge everything to
a room that is really just a view with mini bar,
sit up on hind legs like a skiffle band of nerves and polyps;
the tar for the feathers and everything gone birdie up,
a tear in the awning so that you know nothing is on the mend:
moth-eaten haberdashery, bumper car lisp,
this dusty lint trap fire in waiting.

Bust of Revenge

Move the plaster around all you like –
this bust of revenge, the hair falls away
like everything else you never really had,
the blood squawk of distant crows across cold winds,
shake shake booty trees bare as coming into the world;
force the hand, rub sleep from tireless eye,
build cheekbones high as ever-prominent mountains,
a valley cleft chin to sooth the sayers:
show the sweat, no one ever sees the sweat involved,
the wine of thinning lips, these many hours of compromise;
build the man into a city you can call home,
if only in the mind, count these many gardens
that refuse to grow.

Quartz Parking Lot, Ontario Street

Just tiny pieces in the mix,
but I find them,
take my time as if making fluffernutter
out of the marshmallow horizon,
in that quartz parking lot of the Scotia Bank
along Ontario Street,
across from the Soliel Dental Center
that overcharges for shoddy work,
kicking stones against the curbing as old timers
come and go,
drive off in cars that will outlive them
almost 2 to 1,
the windows rolled down like dollar store
parchment paper
while I feel my belly for a tricky hunger,
for growths that could be
the end of me.

Getting Loose

Does the tiger lament its enclosure?
You bet your stripes it does,
but I’ve been getting loose for hours,
this bottle here beside me like a tart purple warrior
who couldn’t give two samurais what you think
about swinging dicks in the field or anything else,
the most obnoxious music the ears could find;
you can keep your bloody date nights
and company gas card, I can feel the great unwind;
no filters, no fees…
just this Joan Jett cherry bomb getting off
as off as off!

Eye Flusher

Everybody knows about the careless man,
how he throws himself around like a ledge jumper,
a midnight automat leg pumper, every five-and-dime
eye flusher dreaming fountains back into spout –
I always wanted to die for as long as I can remember,
never because of the dead, but rather this blotted untenanted living;
that empty refrigerator way everyone slams the door,
but never out of a serious lasting hunger…
Don’t be so dramatic! says a handsome sandstorm of Ideaologues,
but it has always been there,
right behind the eyes like a bucket of stinking chum,
like a building with a rooftop waiting for jumpers
who bought what I always bought: that the inconvenienced store
never stays open; those many long-haul miles
the sleepy midnight truckers know so well.

Over the Hill

Just traversed, a simple cow town hill,
more mound than Everest, really
and stopping a few feet away on the other side
I look back, not out of any misplaced sense of accomplishment,
but simply to settle an unsteadied breathing;
the affairs of the deceased stuck in probate,
the living fighting over the dead as though no one
wants to be stuck with the cost of the casket –
if there was any love to be felt, I would want to feel it,
standing on the other side of the precipice,
hand on hips, watching the clouds in the sky
and the sputtering rust wagon cars
in traffic pass me by.

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, Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review. 

You can read more of Ryan’s work here on Ink Pantry.