Carpenter Bees in the Deck Wood Starting Over
atmospherics
the pulsing drill bit man
riot police forming lines like ants to sugar
and volleys of tear gas, the outdoorsman’s fog machine,
truncheons knocked against shields in rhythmic violence
store awnings protruding like the entrepreneur’s hanging blue foreskin
little men in barbershop chairs getting the forest of their hair cut away
straight razors across the face in cold metallic precision
I love this land, not out of some waving idiot patriotism
but because the sand between my toes is grainy
and tangible
the grass blades sharper then glass refusing to harm you
green knives like walking across a bed of nails
the sprinkler wet laughter of hurried children
carpenter bees in the deck wood starting over
and this is the moment you choose
to come to me with your plan,
the whites of your eyes
murder-for-hire bloodshot
with effort.
Straight Outta Compton, Straight into Soaker Tubs
What to make of gangsta rap
at fifty?
Everyone in mansions
in the Hollywood Hills
with someone to do their shopping
and someone to do their thinking
and $10 000 poodles
named after obscure
French butlers.
The prenup long
signed.
Arthritis
now the largest
concern.
And property tax, of course,
that shit keeps going up
each year.
New Digs
I like the new neighbourhood.
Nary a dull moment.
There’s the electrician in his van taking pictures of small children
and many dogs in traffic
and the crack whores falling out of the crack house
one after the other like frazzled rain…
Hell, just the other day a man ran down the street.
He was completely naked.
Then a woman ran past after him.
She was naked as well.
I took a long swig of beer
and watched.
I guess it’s true what they say;
behind every naked man
there’s a naked
woman.
Though anatomically speaking
you imagine it the other way
around…
I watched them round the bend in the road
until I could not see them anymore.
Then I went back inside
and let a chair sit on me
for a change.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
