five poems
by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
The Real Housewives of Chernobyl
I have never watched a single
Real Housewives series,
but I would definitely check out
The Real Housewives of Chernobyl.
Walking around with four hands
and seven arms, glowing in the dark
as they throw flutes of wine
in each other’s faces, screeching
to the high heavens. Their yapping mutant
rat dogs scampering about on hooves
from the radiation, scales where the fur
used to be, a most off-putting blue,
and those sickly yellow eyes, six per pooch.
Lost in the excitement of infidelity accusations,
arguments over who is two-faced or tacky
or some deplorable mix of the two.
Or who is fat, perhaps the greatest crime of all.
These vicious monsters on deformed parade.
Hunchbacked, with hissing boils.
I would watch that show for sure.
Just imagine the ratings for a straight doozy
like that.
Vaseline Highway
The popes go up in smoke
and I drive my seething ramrod jalopy
down the Vaseline highway,
looking for bullet trains from the minds
of lone gunmen,
and the pearly white who sold me
on lemons
says I got a real discount rack dandy:
two doors fallen off,
cracked lightning through the windshield,
a hole in the front passenger floorboard
so I can see how the gophers
have dug out their very
own hell.
Gaylord McDonald’s
We are half-day tired
and go inside for a break
from the road.
An old lady
cleaning by the baby seats
on Halloween.
Dressed as a witch
carrying a bottle of blue disinfectant
by the nozzle.
And an old cattle prod
to push the garbage down
into cans.
The snoring homeless
sleeping in booths
under tarps that crinkle
each time they move.
Albert Anastasia
I wonder how many mobsters
think of Albert Anastasia
when they go to the barber?
I know I would.
That was a whole lot more
than a little off the top.
Maybe it’s different for
the general public,
but those Cosa Nostra boys
gotta have their guard up.
I’m surprised
our friends of a friend
aren’t all walking around
with mom cuts.
465
that’s the number the censor gave him,
straight out of Trinity and onto the banned books list,
the Irish swallow their own, especially one so against the church,
and in Paris he could teach a bit, those long silent walks
by the water’s edge with Joyce, the plodding pace of a fellow countryman,
never a word which seemed to please them both:
he who wrote of the world and he who wished to erase it,
strange companions before the war, and when it came
those little “boy scout activities” that can get a man in trouble,
and later, those many absurd plays that always looked to do away
with the world and most everyone in it.
Photo of Ryan Quinn Flanagan
BIO: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, Blood+Honey, The New York Quarterly, Rusty Truck, Literary Yard, Clockwise Cat, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.