Poetry: Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Meeting the Queen of Pain

 

I was tearing goldleaf from the mental rafters 

and the doctor got worried,

set me up with the queen

of pain

 

and I was tired of fighting

so I decided to come clean,

told her the whole history,

held nothing back that day:

everything.

 

And you know what the queen of pain did?

With all those papers on her wall?

Behind that practiced lipstick paint job? 

 

She thanked me for coming and showed me the door.

Almost daring me to do it.

 

It was then that I truly

knew the secret.

 

Our terrible realized secret.

 

I could see it in her eyes.

She wanted me gone.

 

Crispy Building

 

I live so far up in the North now,

that there are crispy buildings

tucked away deep in the Canadian Shield

with an overnight light for thieves,

so that an army of night moths covers

everything, baking in the noonday sun.

 

They pay these kids to come by with scrapers,

to remove the blanket of bodies

from this crispy building.

 

That appalling sound of tearing down

old band posters

that never made it.

 

So the building can look like a proper

place of business again.

Half-welcoming if you wear closed-toed shoes

and come with a buyer’s mind.

 

It’s crispy buildings for months.

Until the sun and the hope and the money

is gone.

 

Moving Day

 

The old man across the street was dying.

His son drove up to town to stay with him.

 

Getting rid of the old man’s few belongings

before he was even gone.

 

Setting everything by the curb

with a carboard sign that read: Free.

 

And it didn’t take long for things to start disappearing.

Every time I went to the window, something else was gone.

 

I saw these two young guys grab two chairs

and carrying them off upside down over their heads.

 

The seats pushing down against their matted hair.

Walking back down towards Bailey Lane.

 

Obvious meth heads.

Squirrelly, skinny and shaking.

 

I guess it’s moving day for the bedbugs,

I said to my wife.

 

She laughed.

Remembering how the pest control guy  

had been to the old man’s house just weeks earlier.

The place was infested.

 

The two meth heads also took this mysterious beige box

placed on one of the shelving units.

 

You think pandora’s in there?

I asked.

 

Worse!

my wife said.

 

By the next morning,

there was almost nothing left.

 

Someone had even taken the cardboard Free sign.

I closed the curtains over, and searched the fridge

for something to eat.

 

The Noses Are Nine

 

Panic mode brush strokes

and my paper airplane bombers

looking for Hiroshimas

to call their own,

circling drain cleaner solstices

from that slumbering hammer-toed

bear den of a witch

that smells like hepatitis ice machine

vomit buckets and throaty cold

shoulder cigarettes –

the noses are nine, throwing down gang signs

in baseless hood rat statuary,

shining shoes like busied lobby podiatry

of the smooth dark sun,

those burning antacid lies like all the others;

what I believe is a nest of thickets and what I am

is pet shop turtles under glass, brought to

loggerheads by amateur confusions

& if you go to bed with anything,

make it a pillow of lumpy oatmeal,

traverse those twisted walking stick hills

the three drink minimums find so magical:

casting rangy spells of ineptitude over everything

you pretend to know.

 

Black Ocean

 

Bobby’s in a flashlight,

sending all the signals,

Denver has an airport,

so many wings

 

that black ocean

of disapproval

below the 38^th

 

staged walkouts,

the curse of Kimchi Queens,

 

chest expanders

like seven lane highways

to nowhere,

 

my signature

over everything

like cheap cologne,

 

that good bourbon

you keep locked away

like a man condemned;

 

was that enough things

pretending to be something else?

 

Out here

fishing prized marlin

between my ears.

 

The dog-eared pages

of old books

I can’t remember.

---

Setu, August 2024