Chance Meeting in the Hall
You should know that I set the whole
thing up
because I am the hall.
I kept making myself smaller and
smaller until there
was nothing left for you to do but run
into each other.
This chance meeting in the hall, or so
it would seem.
Just a momentary glance, but that’s
enough.
Squished together awkwardly like these
twin
couplets if we are honest.
You made me smile.
The hall is happy, you should know
that.
Yakuza Glory
I love all those Yakuza movies out of
Japan.
Filmed in Tokyo in that perpetual
noir-ish rain.
Bankrolled by the Yakuza themselves,
there is a level of neon
glorification.
Not all the time, but enough to
notice.
All that honour and betrayal spilling
out
of the soup can, into a heated pot
on the stove. Octopi from other planets
scouring of salty oceans for all the
best looks.
Hedy Lamarr picking broken needles out
of Howard Hughes’ roaming JW
arms.
And my loyalty has become a fleet of
broken telephone transport trucks.
If you see me roaring down the
freeway,
pull your guts out from your treehouse
and wait for the sawmill to see its
own shadow. Six more weeks of treachery
and enough sodium to fill the gills
from gear to shift.
Head Shop Rastafarian
I love that tri-coloured beanie
you wear like a hacky sack
the boys in blue can’t stop kicking
around
when the new mayor decides to get
tough
on crimes that are not his own
and the funding that comes down
always comes down on the people
who have never had it
some call it money;
others, donations or the vig…
As I pet the twin-peppered stone manes
of statuesque lions
outside the public library.
Look for Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat
tilting uneasily in the inner harbour.
The summer patio crowd
kicking easy heels.
That crinkly sample size way the
chocolatier
with bad hair
wraps everything in colour
like individual galaxies that always
end
at the register.
Patsy Maker
Pull out the counting machine,
even the closet is coming out of the
closet these days,
sitting around in government-funded
sun chairs
looking for a patsy maker to turn
everyone into overly
culpable sandwiches; magic bullets on
state safari,
slow the motorcade down to half a
dozen garden slugs
working their way up the pressure
treated fence line –
Mr. Sirhan did it in the kitchen with
a gun; Clue is such
a fun game to play, so many more
laughs than all those
hours of Hungry Hungry Hippos during
food scarcity,
who would of thought some yuppie
fusion food truck
would let you down, be your undoing
like
swearing in cursive so the paddle
leaves the canoe
and finds that puckered sandstorm of
your ass –
do you like my Carlos the Jackal
shades, dig them
like sloppy sandcastles below the
waterline
of kill shot forethought? The brains spilling out
over the seat fabric like breaking the
yoke
at some greasy spoon diner that burns
the bacon
so you can’t taste the pig and his
heavy club
that seems to always come down in
crowds.
Everyone Hoping to Be Redeemed like Expired Coupons
Christ is in Brazil, picking up the
malaria,
and just because the robot mosquitoes
aren’t the real McCoy,
doesn’t mean they can’t create a buzz;
I haven’t seen modern
science so hot on anything since it
tried to open Windows 95
for the first time and enjoy such a
functionally systematic breeze
and as things grow so much more iffy in
such a jiffy,
I see the glowing prayer candle crowd
giving secular arsonists
a run for their money; everyone hoping
to be redeemed
like expired coupons, ushered back
into the theatre
at this late hour with a family-sized
popcorn on
a Big Gulp sugar water high.
I don’t sit a chance, not even in
chairs without arms
like cosmetic amputees. Those Hell hounds in the next yard
trying to eat through the fence to get
at me.
The black town car driven to the
airport by some young thing
that has never taken off himself. With ear buds and a gas card
and that sublime statuesque way he
holds the trunk open
like a Doric column that’s had more
body work
than some sad forgotten chicken wire
Van Gogh
the art restoration junkies can’t stop
plunging their
hungry turpentine brushes down into
like losing
someone else’s virginity for them.
See you tonight, at some sketchy Motel
6 by the state line.
That constant whoosh of journeymen
cars through a passing rain.
I’ll be that human waterfall throwing
cold sink water
over the dangling dime heavy bag of my
face.
If you have to ask for a map, then it
was never love or lust
or anything else. Hungry bedbugs all through these
unforgiving Jericho walls. The sounds of the living always
replace that slippery tadpole memory
of the dead.
Some skinny mystery burner pimp on the
phone,
sending girls to all the rooms. All I need is a sudden
unbroken sleep. A few hours away from the dying light.
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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