—Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Eliot, Ontario, Canada
—Anonymous Photos
MIDWIFE CRISIS
It was a small town
in the middle of nowhere.
A slowly dying mining town
with a lack of services.
And a shortage of midwives
for all the pregnant ladies.
The infant mortality rate
was three times the national
average.
I saw it on this news program
that made their news anchors walk
into the camera shot so things
would look real dramatic.
And they all wore heels
so it sounded like cavalry
riding into battle.
Anyway, babies kept dying
and people kept leaving this town
so that the mayor feared
there would be no one left
in a few years.
The story after that was about
migrating sharks.
But I had the television on mute
so I don’t know about
the sharks.
__________________
I AM A FIREFIGHTER IN A JANITOR’S BODY
She jumps up in bed
and seizes my arm with
an uncanny strength.
I THINK I SAW A GHOST!,
she yells,
I SAW, I SAW, I SAW,
I SAW…
She is in a panic.
I pinch the flesh on her wrist.
Bringing her back with pain.
I am almost proud of myself
for thinking so quickly.
I am a firefighter in a janitor’s body.
Putting out fires in the bedroom.
The older you get, sleep replaces sex.
I can’t explain it.
As soon as I hear her snoring again,
I know I am good for a couple
more hours.
DOUBTING AUNT MIMI
I doubt this table was crafted for your séance. There are carpenters that belong to the union and then there is the ghost of Aunt Mimi. With more to say even though she lived well past a hundred years old. It is hard to believe she would have any more to say after the first century of speech. But that is how the living roll. Making up the words of the dead so the living can get there without regret. Terminal Aunt Mimi always hated you, now we know why. That whole died-peacefully-in-her-sleep nonsense. Surrounded by friends and family. She seems to remember that whole business of dying differently, and since you are asking, she will tell you through the séance of your table. Or maybe you should stop abusing fentanyl. Even if it is by prescription. Mengele was a doctor too, that does not speak so well to the profession. I know it is just a patch, but we are not sewing holes on jeans here. It took Delores and Tom Petty and it will take countless more. All because you want to speak to Aunt Mimi even though she is in the ground. Would you whisper to an acorn behind the back of a mating squirrel? And those friends around you, they are not friends. There is the question of the inheritance and they want it answered. As for Aunt Mimi, pay your respects and be done with the thing. You will be joining her soon enough.
___________________
WHAT WAS I DOING?
I was leaning against the side of the building.
The underside of the brick eating into my shoulder
where the mortar had chipped away.
You were not there.
I could say you were, but we would both
know I was lying.
I was leaning against the side of the building
counting the cigarette butts pushed down into the pavement.
By the dumpster that always smelled, not only
in the scorching summers.
And the idling traffic spit out enough exhaust
to create its own sky.
I was leaning against the side of the building
watching it happen.
Bony half-naked children wheeling tricycles
in thoughtless circles.
The sound of a skill saw in the near distance.
If you had been there, you may have laughed.
Leaning against the side of that building.
BLESS HER HEART
A little southern passive aggressive
in the French Quarter
and I begin to wonder about the exorcist
with missing teeth,
seems like the type of thing you might
get in order before Jell-O wrestling the devil
out of souls, but what do I know?
Just last week I heard the neighbour yell: FETCH, BOY!
to his dog and I got confused believing it was my boss
and I was still in my tighty whities, but sacrifices
have to be made for freedom or the sun will keep rising
in the east instead of the west, I’ve seen the coffins
and only thought of Dracula’s Brides a few times;
I don’t want to live forever, I’ve been on suicide watch
three times in my life, no joke—
the only things that will live forever are bigotry
and cockroaches
and maybe dirty plates if we insisted on
eating off them,
but this exorcist seems more like a librarian—
he keeps reading from his book and telling everyone
to be quiet; he’s doing his best, bless his heart,
but some cats just don’t have it.
________________
SHE BOP
We walk into the new bank
that has just opened up
in the lower plaza.
No one has money.
We are first in line.
The girls seem surprised.
My wife is just here to make sure
her changed password
has been recorded
after the latest hack.
While Cyndi Lauper She Bops
her way out of the ‘80s
and the printer never runs
out of paper.
_________________
FRA’ MARTINO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
PANTLESS SALAD
She has just arrived home from
a 12-hour shift at the hospital.
Almost falling down the stairs with laughter
when she looks into the kitchen
and sees me making a salad for dinner
without any pants on.
What are you doing?,
she laughs.
Making a pantless salad,
I answer.
The anti-fungal cream on my legs
has yet to dry in.
We have just gotten back from a week
in Vegas.
Picked up a strange rash that the missus
thinks is from dirty children at the pool,
possibly foot and mouth.
So I am standing in the kitchen
with my ass hanging out.
Thinking about that converted outhouse
along the highway outside Webbwood
with the sign that read:
Beef 4 Sail.
And how I imagined that anyone
who went inside never came out
again.
__________________
ASK THE SNOW
This is not the road to Los Angeles.
There is snow everywhere.
Shoulder-high when you venture out.
The dead of winter.
This is not Fante’s dust.
The people that live here have no dreams.
Everything is hibernating or dead or shovelling.
It is salt on the bottom of your boots, not a dust.
A salt that will tell you nothing.
There simply to melt the ice
and leach into the water
table.
Ask it anything
and it will not answer.
Trust me,
I have asked.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE FALL OF AMERICA
—Ryan Quinn Flanagan
The
fall
of
America
involved
crappy
shoes
and
an
icy
walkway.
__________________
—Medusa, with a big thank-you to Canadian Ryan Flanagan for today’s fine poems from up North, and a reminder that Speak Up: The Art of Storytelling and Poetry will feature the theme of “Coming of Age” this evening, 7pm, at the Avid Reader in Sacramento. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Anonymous Photos
MIDWIFE CRISIS
It was a small town
in the middle of nowhere.
A slowly dying mining town
with a lack of services.
And a shortage of midwives
for all the pregnant ladies.
The infant mortality rate
was three times the national
average.
I saw it on this news program
that made their news anchors walk
into the camera shot so things
would look real dramatic.
And they all wore heels
so it sounded like cavalry
riding into battle.
Anyway, babies kept dying
and people kept leaving this town
so that the mayor feared
there would be no one left
in a few years.
The story after that was about
migrating sharks.
But I had the television on mute
so I don’t know about
the sharks.
__________________
I AM A FIREFIGHTER IN A JANITOR’S BODY
She jumps up in bed
and seizes my arm with
an uncanny strength.
I THINK I SAW A GHOST!,
she yells,
I SAW, I SAW, I SAW,
I SAW…
She is in a panic.
I pinch the flesh on her wrist.
Bringing her back with pain.
I am almost proud of myself
for thinking so quickly.
I am a firefighter in a janitor’s body.
Putting out fires in the bedroom.
The older you get, sleep replaces sex.
I can’t explain it.
As soon as I hear her snoring again,
I know I am good for a couple
more hours.
DOUBTING AUNT MIMI
I doubt this table was crafted for your séance. There are carpenters that belong to the union and then there is the ghost of Aunt Mimi. With more to say even though she lived well past a hundred years old. It is hard to believe she would have any more to say after the first century of speech. But that is how the living roll. Making up the words of the dead so the living can get there without regret. Terminal Aunt Mimi always hated you, now we know why. That whole died-peacefully-in-her-sleep nonsense. Surrounded by friends and family. She seems to remember that whole business of dying differently, and since you are asking, she will tell you through the séance of your table. Or maybe you should stop abusing fentanyl. Even if it is by prescription. Mengele was a doctor too, that does not speak so well to the profession. I know it is just a patch, but we are not sewing holes on jeans here. It took Delores and Tom Petty and it will take countless more. All because you want to speak to Aunt Mimi even though she is in the ground. Would you whisper to an acorn behind the back of a mating squirrel? And those friends around you, they are not friends. There is the question of the inheritance and they want it answered. As for Aunt Mimi, pay your respects and be done with the thing. You will be joining her soon enough.
___________________
WHAT WAS I DOING?
I was leaning against the side of the building.
The underside of the brick eating into my shoulder
where the mortar had chipped away.
You were not there.
I could say you were, but we would both
know I was lying.
I was leaning against the side of the building
counting the cigarette butts pushed down into the pavement.
By the dumpster that always smelled, not only
in the scorching summers.
And the idling traffic spit out enough exhaust
to create its own sky.
I was leaning against the side of the building
watching it happen.
Bony half-naked children wheeling tricycles
in thoughtless circles.
The sound of a skill saw in the near distance.
If you had been there, you may have laughed.
Leaning against the side of that building.
BLESS HER HEART
A little southern passive aggressive
in the French Quarter
and I begin to wonder about the exorcist
with missing teeth,
seems like the type of thing you might
get in order before Jell-O wrestling the devil
out of souls, but what do I know?
Just last week I heard the neighbour yell: FETCH, BOY!
to his dog and I got confused believing it was my boss
and I was still in my tighty whities, but sacrifices
have to be made for freedom or the sun will keep rising
in the east instead of the west, I’ve seen the coffins
and only thought of Dracula’s Brides a few times;
I don’t want to live forever, I’ve been on suicide watch
three times in my life, no joke—
the only things that will live forever are bigotry
and cockroaches
and maybe dirty plates if we insisted on
eating off them,
but this exorcist seems more like a librarian—
he keeps reading from his book and telling everyone
to be quiet; he’s doing his best, bless his heart,
but some cats just don’t have it.
________________
SHE BOP
We walk into the new bank
that has just opened up
in the lower plaza.
No one has money.
We are first in line.
The girls seem surprised.
My wife is just here to make sure
her changed password
has been recorded
after the latest hack.
While Cyndi Lauper She Bops
her way out of the ‘80s
and the printer never runs
out of paper.
_________________
FRA’ MARTINO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
WITH FEDERICO FELLINI’S UNDERPANTS?
OH A NURSERY!!
Vader Jakob Panie Janie Fra’ Martino, yes,
I think I’ll stay for drinks
not enough to make new enemies, just to avoid old friends
and they say it’s autumn out there, but it feels more permanent
than that, stark and oddly flattering at the same time
the way everyone dresses well for a funeral, no no,
I hardly meant to suggest this is a funeral, this is a nursery
and I know that because everyone is acting like a baby,
I half-expect a stork to come through the door at any moment
with a mouthful of flabby neurotics from the Guggenheim—
what’s that you say? four types of wallpaper in a single room
is not excessive, it’s indecisive; what’s the difference? haha,
I hardly noticed this mantel here with dusty elbows resting upon it,
of course I love your nursery, it reminds me of warm milk…of Miss Brandy
Alexander and the lineage and stock and foibles it takes to get in the door
and stay here long enough to regret life stories outright—
jolly good, the chandelier is sporting earrings:
Ashes, ashes
we all smoke now?
OH A NURSERY!!
Vader Jakob Panie Janie Fra’ Martino, yes,
I think I’ll stay for drinks
not enough to make new enemies, just to avoid old friends
and they say it’s autumn out there, but it feels more permanent
than that, stark and oddly flattering at the same time
the way everyone dresses well for a funeral, no no,
I hardly meant to suggest this is a funeral, this is a nursery
and I know that because everyone is acting like a baby,
I half-expect a stork to come through the door at any moment
with a mouthful of flabby neurotics from the Guggenheim—
what’s that you say? four types of wallpaper in a single room
is not excessive, it’s indecisive; what’s the difference? haha,
I hardly noticed this mantel here with dusty elbows resting upon it,
of course I love your nursery, it reminds me of warm milk…of Miss Brandy
Alexander and the lineage and stock and foibles it takes to get in the door
and stay here long enough to regret life stories outright—
jolly good, the chandelier is sporting earrings:
Ashes, ashes
we all smoke now?
PANTLESS SALAD
She has just arrived home from
a 12-hour shift at the hospital.
Almost falling down the stairs with laughter
when she looks into the kitchen
and sees me making a salad for dinner
without any pants on.
What are you doing?,
she laughs.
Making a pantless salad,
I answer.
The anti-fungal cream on my legs
has yet to dry in.
We have just gotten back from a week
in Vegas.
Picked up a strange rash that the missus
thinks is from dirty children at the pool,
possibly foot and mouth.
So I am standing in the kitchen
with my ass hanging out.
Thinking about that converted outhouse
along the highway outside Webbwood
with the sign that read:
Beef 4 Sail.
And how I imagined that anyone
who went inside never came out
again.
__________________
ASK THE SNOW
This is not the road to Los Angeles.
There is snow everywhere.
Shoulder-high when you venture out.
The dead of winter.
This is not Fante’s dust.
The people that live here have no dreams.
Everything is hibernating or dead or shovelling.
It is salt on the bottom of your boots, not a dust.
A salt that will tell you nothing.
There simply to melt the ice
and leach into the water
table.
Ask it anything
and it will not answer.
Trust me,
I have asked.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE FALL OF AMERICA
—Ryan Quinn Flanagan
The
fall
of
America
involved
crappy
shoes
and
an
icy
walkway.
__________________
—Medusa, with a big thank-you to Canadian Ryan Flanagan for today’s fine poems from up North, and a reminder that Speak Up: The Art of Storytelling and Poetry will feature the theme of “Coming of Age” this evening, 7pm, at the Avid Reader in Sacramento. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
Celebrate Poetry!
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