—Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada
—Anonymous Photos of Elliot Lake
—Anonymous Photos of Elliot Lake
A BACHELOR OF THE ARTS
A cool painting
won’t let you glide through the trenches
on ice skates,
read nefarious from library shelves
that get you drunk on words
so you take something home with you,
to enjoy for weeks at a time,
propped up in bed flipping through
those many numbered pages
until the late fees kick in,
a demand for money you don’t have
and a bachelor of the arts may as well
be a bachelor of anywhere else;
blowing over the simple soup spoon
until you don’t burn your mouth.
HILT
Sometimes
I
climb
down
into
the
hilt
of
a
ceremonial
sword
and
refuse
to
take
a
stab
at
anything.
PRETENDING TO BE A DINOSAUR
The highschool
my father attended
was levelled to the ground.
The arena where we used to watch
Barrie Colts hockey games
is now a fire station.
Bums fight in the street over drugs.
Hookers offering their services
at the bus station where
I once sat on my father’s shoulders.
Pretending to be a dinosaur
with snarled claws
for fingers.
As we waited for the Allandale bus
to take us back home.
EARLY STAGE
Some people
were just blown up
at a bar three streets away.
Could be terrorism.
Human error
or human purpose.
Details are sketchy
at this early stage,
as Reuters is so fond
of saying.
Like the theatre is in its infancy
when no one could pretend
to cry.
Not for an audience,
not convincingly.
THIS POINT GUARD NAMED ROB
THAT COULDN’T MISS
That’s just how I laid it out to him.
As sure a thing as the stocks that made
other people rich.
I didn’t know how it worked,
but it did.
Everyone wants to back a winner.
And I remember when I thought we had the best basketball team in the city,
invited my father to come see them win the championship game
on home court and he declined.
Without even thinking about it.
Against his traditional city enemies.
Even though we had this point guard named Rob
that couldn’t miss.
And how I went without him
and sat in the stands with the jocks
and the many groupies.
Collecting their death stares
and cheering on
even though the home team was
never really my home team
and down by four at half.
And the second half was no better.
Our star point guard looked nervous.
As if the stage was too big for him.
College scouts may be sniffing around.
He kept turning the ball over to these overly-athletic
black guys that would dunk on us.
It wasn’t even close.
When it was over,
I walked home in dark.
My father asked how it went
and I walked straight up
to my room.
He never came up and said anything.
I had been tricked by the lights.
Never again.
I guess he had too and wanted to leave me
with the truth of that in my
own time.
MYSELF
I
love
writing
for
myself,
so
very
selfish
like
returning
to
the
all
u
can
eat
buffet
with
three
plates
after
starting
with
dessert.
___________________
Today’s LittleNip:
FILLING THE COFFERS WITH PHLEGM
—Ryan Quinn Flanagan
The queen of England is the prince of pop
is the king of the hill is the duke of earl
in the emperor’s new clothes from the Salvation Army
marching into Manchuria walking like
an Egyptian with 80,000 reasons and half
the guns.
___________________
Welcome back to the Kitchen, Ryan! Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Medusa's Kitchen, Setu, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Tonight in our area, Poetry Off-the-Shelves meets in Placerville, 5-7pm, at the main branch of the El Dorado County Library on Fair Lane. And at 7pm In Sacramento, Upstairs at the B presents An Evening of Poetry w/Spoken Word Artist Buddy Wakefield (and others) at The Sofia, 2700 Capitol Av., in a benefit for Creation District. Then at 9pm, Tara Crawford is featured at Mahogany Urban Poetry Series at Queen Sheba on Broadway in Sac.; open mic starts at 10pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa, celebrating the poetry in those many mounds of snow!
For 15 Surprising Facts about Winter Weather, go to
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