Ryan Quinn Flanagan

parading around
with the gobshite army,
bristling bearded face
scowling tetrahedrons back
into shape
and this moment of indecision
is all it takes,
tiny feline vacillations
about staying in or out,
Isaac Newton’s cat door
said to be the first of its kind;
a thinking man needs time
to think,
arrange his clothespin thoughts
upon strange laundry lines
that droop from weight
and age.

It must be alive. I grab my shirt by the collar and
read the label. Polyester. I knew it felt like I was wearing
someone else’s dead skin around town. No wonder people
kept looking at me. I just assumed they had confused my glowing
personality with the sun. Turns out it was the whole dead skin
thing which is a mild disappointment. I look through my closet
and find one cotton shirt. I promise never to wash it again
now that I know it breathes. Simulated drowning is not cool,
especially if you are the one being water boarded. I am not
some riches to rags fascist on the government dime. Cotton
breathes like I breathe. I think we will be good friends.
When I stick you in my ears, it is a harmless prank. A wet Willie
by other means, but never out of malice. I bet if I hooked
a cotton swab up to an EKG I could get a heartbeat. I realize
you are not much of a talker, but it would be nice to be able
to hear you once in a while, my friend.

Hands behind the back
could this be an
arrest?

Civil disobedience
is cutting the tag off your
brand new mattress
with kitchen scissors
of knowing.

Let the deaf mutes make gang signs,
the 40-hour week is waiting.

I have found it and floundered
like idiot archaeology.

The plane is too small.
Some of the luggage is left behind.
It will be at your destination
when you get there.

The stewardess smiles.
The luggage sitting on the tarmac
With sticky tags around the handles.
The plane is too small.

Everyone coughs.
The pilot sounds like a real cowboy.
The seats are too small.
The luggage on the tarmac.

Only 900 were ever built.
This is one of them.
The plane is too small.
The stewardess is coughing.

editors note: Let’s get this thing off the runway; all cough together. – mh clay

Is that a security detail walking beside you,
or a cane?

The car won’t start
and the mind won’t stop.

If you could unlearn me, you would have by now.

Quality demonstrates craft.
Quantity illustrates consistency.

Dizzy hopscotch girls jumping into the sun.

I wouldn’t spend another dime
on this nickel of a life.

Afternoons are best for me.
Mornings should be banned.

3 feelers in the feeling room
curb stomp nemesis weather patterns
down the dirt of country roads

Himalaya high on rock
crushing sound of the power band

a zoo for the wild ones
Thomas Wolfe as a showerhead

the blood I bleed was never mine
erect neglect in barrier reef

3 feelers in the feeling room
tanta-lies for a horny truth
shimmy wires in a playground play

3 feelers in the feeling
room.

Go exist in a decommissioned
missile silo in rural Kansas
for top dollar

for all I
care

I have seen the whole
of the human race
live horribly

and continue
in the worst
of ways

betraying the ones
they love
so convincingly

the moon could land
on itself

and call
foul.

to be avoided at
all costs

a ruse of the Russian
or the Chinese –
let’s say the Chinese
for effect…

Disarming
just like Oppenheimer
before the bomb.

Getting you to smile
when your face should
know better.

My car fails
in front of a line of orange pylons
and I take it as
a sign.

Cars fail all the time,
you say
but I know better.

The pylons are there because of construction,
you argue.

That’s how it may appear to
a layman.

But I live in the abstract,
see the many patterns.

I know how the fates conspire.

Getting out of the car
I take my place two-thirds the way
down the line.

Standing straight
and forever silent,
my arms at my
side.

Not orange yet,
but that’s what evolution
is for.

He is up each morning
the real-estate developer
building sandcastles on the beach below
with a purple pail and a yellow plastic shovel
his work tools, the tools of his trade
and halfway out the front door
on his way to work
he stops to kiss a hat rack with a styrofoam head
on the cheek
(his wife of many years)
before taking the elevator
down.