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| Ryan Quinn Flanagan |
They said some nice things
about the body in the casket
stiff, like how you remember your
grandparents,
even in life;
the persistent reassuring way their necks
never seemed
to turn, as though they had been cut from
marble
and left for statues
virtuous because the young do not
understand
the bedroom, and the old run from it
like a schoolyard bully concocted of
tongues
and pillows
and no one had anything bad to say
because it was not right for
such occasions
taking turns sharing their stories
the priest with more of a say than most
because he held the keys to the
house
and when they were done
a long line formed to walk by the casket
with all those stories fresh
in their heads;
everyone knowing the man,
and never the grave.
The Red Queen
could not be seen
all at once
because it was said
her beauty would
be too great
as to blind any
viewer
and when I put her
on the front of my book
I had you in mind
that clumsy mudslide way
you ogle everything
into easy pocket change
relevance
and how
you would scream
when your eyes were cut
from your head
and lead away
in a beverage cooler
over many time zones
on ice
by the trigger men
of modern
science.
Equine to the Nines
I had crossed into the old city
skipping rocks over chipped cobblestone
and the jazz from inside the club
made me stop and listen with tired ears
that had not eaten in three days
and the sound my belly made
was the sound of the poor,
some deep unruly grumbling
under shirt,
and I decided to group it in with
the percussion section and then
I felt a little better,
watching the horse drawn carriages
shit in the street
as the young lovers that sat behind it
enjoyed the sights and ignored
the smell.
Dreary Fox
Dreary fox
your stockingless leg marvels
no longer bend at
the knee
denizens of the bad beer
down throaty smoke-charmed
gullets
and there was a time when I pretended
to know you
like those cards that come with a new
wallet
and you don’t throw them out,
they are alien to you and still somehow
part
of the daily working paradigm
the same way eyebrows can be plucked
like the strings of a guitar
for a song
that with crush you
with its catchy trash compactor
emptiness.
