Ryan Quinn Flanagan (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: 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, Setu, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, GloMag, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Why Previous Experience Appears on the Modern Resume

All male heirs

were seen as a threat,

so the sultan ordered them all killed

and young Ibrahim

locked away in a cage

at the age of two.

Placed in the dark

and denied all human contact

outside of being given food

and water.

22 years of this,

so that when the Sultan died

they came to Ibrahim as the sole heir

and he thought it a joke.

Refusing to come out of his cage

until they showed him the body

of the Sultan.

Figured it a ruse that would lead

to his execution.

And after they showed him the body

and proclaimed him the new Sultan,

the first thing he did was walk out into the courtyard,

his eyes having a terrible time adjusting to the light.

Then he went on a historic binge.

Ran through the harem as though making up

for lost time.

Ignored all matters of state,

choosing instead to have all the cats shaved down

and their fur made into capes.

This child who had been denied everything.

No proper education or training.

No light or love or encouragement.

And they thought it a good idea to make him Sultan.

No one taking the name Ibrahim after him,

which should tell you how well that went.

Drowning his entire harem

by weighting them down and ordering them

thrown into the waiting Bosphorus.

Before being dragged back to his cage

and strangled to death in the dark

from which he came.

Furniture Music 

You are not even there,

doing all the things you are doing

around all the people you

are arounding;

edicts from steep rollercoaster rides

that scream their way back out of lava

flow bedrooms on the cool,

believable Sasquatch foot patrols  

over this steaming Styrofoam coffee –

your eyes cut right out of their head,

placed in front of distracted appraisal jewellers

who wouldn’t know a cataract from a Kandinsky

which brings me to the fear of fears;

not Death, all those breaths before the last

so problematic, but rather what to wear

over the naked human body

which is why dress up becomes the game

of games and imagination

the only drunk in town.

Are You Holding?

He asked me in the dead of winter.

When snowbanks make fatal heart attacks

of men.

And I told him I could grab my balls,

but that the current chicken hawk market

demanded I charge monies.

                 

Even though he was a friend

and I was not getting any younger.

No exceptions.

They were most adamant about that.

Just a couple dollars in pocket

so the hungry banks weren’t the only tight

bastards weighted down by the personal trainer armies

of the modern age.

Drugs!

he scoffed.

He seemed angry

like my father when he got home

from work.

Various attempts

to stay out of his way.

The smell of skunk weed three doors down

from the people just moved in.

That way his face lit up

with waving backyard sparklers.

The remote to the tv between 2^nd hand couch cushions.

My laced brown boots back inside.

These drunken brown stairs that will be the end of me.

Simple as that.

Setu, April 2020