Fire Beavers In This Hanky Panky Land

—Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Lake Eliot, Ontario, Canada

—Anonymous Photos

WHAT A YEAR A YEAR MAKES

I dance around wicker cobras
rewire the brain for
monkey science

peek at colour-coordinated cue cards
of someone else’s remembering

what a year a year makes

games of darts with sponsorship
and cash prizes

mass extinction
on the comeback trail,
stopping to smell the lilac
with greedy wood chipper
nose

and the candle is burnt out
and I am almost there

adding those little touches to everything

free wifi
in the badlands

it’s sex for money
and money for everything
else

it’s new weather stripper
and mangy wolf pack
dominance

free haircuts
for the first one hundred
hedges

and clearing my throat
and Lindbergh in Paris
and skate blades
on ice

in this hanky panky
land.
 

STANDING IN THE KITCHEN THINKING OF
SOMEONE ELSE’S BATHROOM

There I am, on a lean like Pisa,
against a painted counter top that doesn’t
match the cupboards above,
my back thrown out like a folding hand of poker,
standing in the kitchen thinking
of someone else’s bathroom,
a single potted plant on the back of the toilet
to combat the smell
and that shower curtain with consecutive
conch shells on it
so that you can be at the beach
without any of the trouble of getting there
and a few extra rolls of toilet paper
under the sink that leaks a little
so that you can hear it from the bedroom
when you should be sleeping.

PEOPLE GET REAL HONEST FAST WHEN
THEY’RE MADE TO SUFFER

Let me clear that up for you.
I want you to know exactly where I stand.

People get real honest fast when they’re
made to suffer.

This is not running your toes through shag carpets.

Fifty pounds of bling
around your neck
like a rapper’s noose.

Scream queen tonsillitis
never a problem.

This is sleeping homeless outside
in the freezing Canadian winter.
Digging latrines in the permafrost
with your hands.

The Paris Review
will never understand
that.

Such things never leave you.
They colour everything you do.

Which is why I want to be clear.
The hurt is always there.

TOY DRIVE

Some asshole
with an obvious limp
robbed the toy
drive

just before Christmas

and there were still two days
to donate
so all the poor kiddies
woke up happy
enough

but I have to ask:
who does that?

No one knows
because he wore a mask.

The new toys were delivered
under police escort.

There was a picture
on the front page
of the paper.

FIRE BEAVER

etches himself
into the floor tile

the patterned slate
that sticks right on

fire beaver
facing out from the door
breathing a single
plume

of red hot flame

I think we are friends
though I could
be wrong

fire beaver
likes to do his own thing
which is breathing
fire

in a solitary way

so as not to burn
anyone

his fire beaver teeth
keep growing
so that he has to file
them down incessantly

chewing at the edges
of the tile
with his orange fire
teeth.

BOOTS OR HEARTS

She is getting ready for work
in the bathroom.

The Tragically Hip blaring from her phone
long after the singer is gone.

The wonders of technology.
To hear a dead man act so defiant again.
She worked with his mother back in Kingston.

At this charity house for wayward mothers
and their children.

And now he is gone.
Replaced by the hairdryer.
The present needs dry hair
more than the past.

Her work has a dress code
and standards.
   
She will be ready.

NOBODY’S ROPE

I look down at my feet.
Nobody’s rope in the gutter.
Frayed at one end from
an imprecise cut.

Water funnelling under
in a misguided channel back
to sewer.

To the underground.

Where many writers I know
claim to come from.

Which seems odd to me.
The sewer would be a tight fit
for anyone.

And nobody’s rope sits there alone.
Coiled in a twine semi-circle.
I nod as I pass in the street.

Before strolling on to
other things.

BOG BOY

Don’t just lay there,
face of dirt
having not moved your arms
in over three centuries

imagine the women you have missed,
the men like party streamers
with steady work

modern archeology
caking away at your orbital bones
and making many proclamations

bog boy
with his picture taken,
posed in all the papers
like a man on
the take

they still have your hair
so that is something

a little muddy,
but who isn’t these
days?

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

BIG ELECTRIC ANDY

—Ryan Quinn Flanagan

please be seated

he shouldn’t be long

Big Electric Andy
all the way from Pittsburgh

shall I sing for you
shall I sing sing wretched tears
back into gooey eyes 

I told him you were coming

he is most excited

Big Electric Andy
loves to entertain.

______________________

Our thanks to Ryan Quinn Flanagan this morning for his fine poems and the rare opportunity to post shower curtains and the melodious conch (say “conk”) shells!

Sac. Poetry Center will present the MarieWriters Generative Writing Workshop tonight, 6pm, this week facilitated by Laura Rosenthal. 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.

—Medusa
 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.