Western Voices: Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Bio:

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, The Peregrine Muse, Setu, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Poem for a Man Riddled with Bullets

The streets were not kind to you

just as the critics are not kind to me

and they lay a tarp over the lifeless body

as though there is some dignity to be gleaned

from such acts

                

as though mercy can be late to the party

and not treated as a truant; the way the inspectors

dig through your pockets looking for clues,

the hands gloved in talcum powder and the traffic

redirected to neighbouring thoroughfares

so you can lay in the middle of the road

beside an idling car with a cracked sun roof

and I can write this poem for a man riddled

with bullets, a man of colour as they say

on the news which reports from the scene

with its big dumb cameras.

500 Miles of Postcards

all laid out

in a row

signed

like an autograph

from the familiar

anything can be

a postcard,

sent from afar

to those much

nearer

and sitting up in bed

the smile hurts her face

she feels it with her hands

to make sure it is really

there

the careful way he adjusts his mirrors

before pulling away from

the curb

a knife

over ripe tomatoes

before dinner

shipping crates

over open waters

or you in my arms

pecking at cheeks so red

you know I’ve been

drinking.

Where the Filibusters Roam

We are all hunters in our way

never once a gun in these receptive hands

blue veins wound ‘round red knuckle

as though binding a single brown fencepost

in chicken wire

arms outstretched, cracking elbows

where the filibusters roam,

coffee with a friend who hiccups

when they are nervous,

starts books they never intend to finish

which aggravates everyone but the author

who is now dust on the road

and my lips dry and crack and weep,

it is blood sacrifice all over again

it is the heart cut out and revered

like a first edition anything;

something scrawled on the flyleaf,

looks like a recipe for mushroom

soup.

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Western Voices :: Setu, February 2019