Four Superb Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

"Time–that murderer 

No one has caught yet." 

               
~ Charles Simic 

 
Answer to Charles Simic Upon His Impending Death 

 
Time is never the culprit  

so much as inaction. 

           
Any man who blames Time  

for existing 

and never Man for not  

doing so 

               

is a gulag of  

clocks.

 

Chagall On the Wall 

Surely, that can’t be an original,

that Chagall on the wall there,

that green violinist fiddling somewhere

over the village out of all art

school proportion;

anyone with a swimming pool this big

is sub-contracting the great wide ocean

to do some nefarious things

off the clock         off the books,

have you seen the signed Chaucer?

Someone signed it Geoffrey

and everything.

Beware the Dentist who Insists on Lying through Your Teeth 

The novocaine is a nice touch, 

any local anesthetic that helps you escape the  

sprawling gangly burbs for a few hours. 

           

But such pharmaceutical vacations are never free. 

Beware the dentist who insists on lying through your teeth. 

 

That bomb disposal unit of gingivitis  

called in for a thorough cleaning. 

 

Appointments off the books. 

More shell companies than all of crabby Crustacea 

so seasoned movers can't keep up 

with the money. 

 

And everything comes back to you. 

Like high cholesterol. 

 

That sudden tingle from the left  

that has you stroking out on a couch 

wrapped in squeaky hitman's plastic. 

 

Some pillowed-heavy sitting room regular  

beside a bookcase of outdated Encyclopedias 

from the 1970s. 

More blubber than whale,  

so that we all remain on the hunt. 

 

A single pair of Men's size 10 shoes  

by the door. 

 

The sound of wheezing lungs 

from abandoned grain towers. 

 

Our kissy kissy mouth  

chalked full of half-believable cavities. 

 

Under the drill, under fire. 

Moments of head lice from the big  

blood-suckled uneasy.  

 

All my favourite waiters  

on someone else's careless  

junkyard time.

 

Garage Sale Sombrero  

 

I am walking by  

and the haggling has already 

been going on for some time. 

 

Over this garage sale sombrero  

at the end of a freshly paved drive. 

 

The smell of the asphalt still noticeable. 

 

Both buyer and seller highly motivated 

so that the buyer already has the sombrero 

on his head and the seller keeps trying  

to grab at it each time the price he hears back 

is unacceptable. 

 

And I only catch a moment of the exchange: 

 

$6 is hardly unreasonable. This is an authentic 

sombrero from sunny Me-hico! 

 

How do I know it's authentic? Does it come 

with papers of authentication? 

 

At a garage sale? 

 

This is all I hear, 

but the sombrero is gone  

when I walk by again. 

                          
So I guess the buyer got that sombrero 

he had his eye on. 

           

Who knows what the seller finally settled for. 

The look on his face is hardly promising.

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, The New York Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.