Demi-glace Gods
Nothing worse than being sauced
for other sauces,
demi-glace gods spooning out
all the simmering half-baked worship
at discount prices
and they say a dog and its human
grow to look more like each other
as the years go on,
the same is true of writers
and their writing
which does not bode well for me
or damn near anyone else
in this fluttering rapid eye
butterfly net world;
the food channel always there
when you are hungry,
fleecing tigers turned into rugs
like a highly unusual black shoeshine
way of roaring.
The Workers Will Reach An Agreement with Their Oppressors Next Week
I am not some over courteous tailcoat doorman
waiting on tips that never come through –
I have read the papers as well,
seems all is well in this land of many discontents,
the workers will reach an agreement
with their oppressors next week,
so the rest of us can get to work, find that
able punch clock always waiting
to dock you a full half hour for a two minute indiscretion;
no wonder there are clocks everywhere to remind
you that your time was never yours
to begin with, even there at your birth:
the beginning, recorded right there on the certificate;
what a cruel complete prison to build around
those first pink wailing screams that seem
to spill right out of your splayed, exhausted
mystery juice mother while the many nurses working
a double sop up blood and offer an expectant
congratulations that comes for that missed smoke break
continuance of one thing after another.
Hopscotch Girls in the Rain
The handicapped bus pulls up to the curb,
lets a seriously stooped elderly gentleman with double-cane out –
someone must still care.
And I try not to blow it,
the candles have endured enough cake already.
Watching those hopscotch girls in the rain.
A baker’s dozen all in light summer dresses.
Lined up like ladies in waiting.
Making their way through a nimble labyrinth
of chalked numbers.
Barefoot chatterboxing.
A lucid moment I know they will never
get back again.
Quite impressive actually.
The others lost to song and clapping.
A light rain to be sure, but still a faltering sky
beyond notice.
Those successive brown pigtails
running the gamut.
These Many Cold Winters of the Heart is dancing splinters of Life, and that inevitable experience of Death that our common humanity demands we all share. A book of blue-collar poetry, with a surrealist bent, this work is also a reminder of the importance of that great swelling laughter that must always persist under the hard advancing glare of these many unforgiving days.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Rusty Truck, Evergreen Review, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash and The Blue Collar Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
These Many Cold Winters of the Heart is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/winters/172
