Never Marry a Cashier, She is Always Thinking About the Money
Stop asking for a map!
If you don't know where you
are by now,
the trifling hay house ain't
going to bale itself –
I'm less kind than the tarot
reader with platitudes for hands,
but thrice as honest:
Never marry a cashier, she
is always thinking
about the money, the great
fleecing that can and will
happen with thoughtful
misgivings being what they are
and no exit strategy that
does not wish to slam the door shut
on the way out, leave you
dead in the water;
that is why you have a
bloated body, fingers thick
as butcher block sausages
pining after fresh directions,
that fetching dower-dragon
of a change girl always threatening
to explode right out of her
smock.
The Girl with the Driftwood Legs
This little girl
drags her legs behind her
in the street.
Going off at odd angles
below the knee
like loose driftwood
doing its own thing.
The gnarled hands of false spastics.
Seemingly unaffected by
her surroundings.
Scuffed shoe tops bouncing off cracked
pavement,
surrounded by heard not seen
wind chimes.
A yellow flowered summer dress
jutting out from wavering
breaker wall hem.
4 Windows
The light has gone out of all of them,
each a new room, differently
furnished
for the impending non-sensical –
a 5th window sore thumb lit and
standing out,
faltering blinds come down on one side
like the last illumined braggart in a
firing squad line;
the blindfold is for the shooter and never
the condemned,
there is a fear of guilt about looking
into the eyes,
that humanity will step in and replace
training
at the most inopportune of moments –
I look up to these four windows in the
same building,
realize no one is working late if they
don’t
have too and that is enough to make me
smile:
beware the paper plate ease of a simple
man,
how he comes to all things;
those strapless leering whiskey
browns
left continually agog.
“You’re Going to Wreck Mommy’s High”
The crying from the next room
was incessant.
Rolling off the couch,
she staggered into the side room
and stood over the crib.
Picking the baby up and rocking it.
You’re
going to wreck mommy’s high,
she palmed the crying baby’s head.
The smell was awful!
Why
would you do that?
she shook the child violently.
Why
would you want to ruin mommy’s high?
Plugging that little button nose
and fantasizing for just a
moment,
before putting the wailing baby back
into its crib
and stumbling
back to the couch.
The Tattoo Matcher of Jalisco
He works away under hard light.
In the basement of the state police
morgue.
Digging through the garbage bags
full of limbs tossed by the side of
the road.
The tattoo matcher of Jalisco.
Under constant threat from New
Generation.
A heavy drinker,
but would anyone really blame him?
Looking for limbs with prominent
tattoos
to match with the database of
known cartel members.
The naked torsos hung from the
bridges,
often with their genitals cut off
and stuffed in their mouths.
But the limbs that have been removed
are sent to the tattoo matcher.
Paid well enough for his services
to keep showing up each day.
To another batch of duct taped garbage
bags,
so the work of identification
can begin all over again.
The Night of the Tequila
It is said
that Ava Gardner
refused to shoot a night scene
on the set of The Night of the Iguana.
Preferring to get drunk instead.
The director John Huston
joined her for tequila shots until
they were both so plastered that
filming could not continue that night.
Why do I dish the dirt like a straight
tattle?
I must be slowly turning into Truman
Capote.
Check myself for a sudden Cajun lisp.
Gossiping about the dead
should hardly be seen as an
admirable
pursuit of the living.
Yet,
here I am.
A true Nimrod
of the towering
Babel.
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.
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