Poetry: Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

The Way I Walked By the Escalator

Did you see the scorpions in the tank

at the pet shop?

Their tails 

like gnarled hands.

Heads

like tiny robot

companions.

The way I walked

by the escalator,

graceful as ballerinas

in hock.

And later

up the stairwell,

with that great tumbling

mess.

Dearth in the hearts

of the tenants.

A wall of mice

just like at the pet shop.

I liked the scorpions

the best.

***

A Unicycle a Day Keeps the Unibrow Away

That's what I like about

all those old monster movies,

no one is trying for an Oscar.

Just breathing fire

and scaling buildings

like a whole new way

of getting healthy.

A unicycle a day keeps the unibrow away,

that's what my cavernous proctologist

always says.

As I sit in popular restaurants

reading off the menu

like announcing the 

Magna Carta.

***

Poem for a Woman in Line at the Bank

Maybe if I open my eyes like an astral traveller,

maybe then, I could write this poem

for a woman in line at the bank, 

that woman who smiled a lipstick army,

who required the Heimlich

to spit up that hippopotamus,

right there in the bank, can you believe it?

I once sneezed so hard

that I fell into another dimension.

I tried to help her with the hippo

and told her I understood completely.

***

Renoir Meets the Firing Squad

It doesn’t pay to be found painting defences 

along the river, and Renoir was seized by a mob

and lined up to be shot.  His friend the chief of police 

happened to be walking by and saw the crowd.

Recognized Renoir and saved him from the firing squad.

So he could join Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention 

onstage at Atlantis.  Throwing up the horns on bathtub acid.

That is the rumour going around those in the know.

That the ghosts of dead roadies haunt all the tour trucks.

And gnarled Pierre-Auguste having agreed to paint them

into the salon.  With innocuous titles for names,

so the critics don’t lose their lunch 

before dinner.

***

The Beads

The beads knock together 

in concentric circles.

Rather ornate,

like an extinction 

of thieves.

That pink gold colour

that screams fugazi.

Come hovel or high palace,

the sprawling sun shines through.

I am a fidget box of many marvels.

Lost to the dance of the beads.

***

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Setu, April 2025