Tigers in the Tall Grass, Panthers in the Street

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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, The New York Quarterly, Our Poetry Archive, Setu, Literary Yard, and The Oklahoma Review.

His personal website is: http://ryanquinnflanagan.yolasite.com/

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leaf Garden Press
• Release date: Jul 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463625699

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a native of Barrie, ON; a city known for the tornado of 1985 and little else. He presently resides in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada under ten feet of snow with a nurse who drives a big blacked out truck. His work can be found both in print and online. He has an affinity for dragonflies, discount tequila, and all things sarcastic.

Book preview

Plate

The waitress had rough hands.

They chafed against my underside as she brought me

to the table.

And the food on top of me was simple fare

smothered in a blanket of warm gravy

that would make you tired even if you had

just slept fourteen straight restful hours.

Then came the spoons and forks, I always felt bad for them.

Forced into all those greasy waiting mouths.

And the conversation was dull.

Something about the quickest way to get

from here to there and perhaps four or five

other tiresome things.

And when they were done and paid up

it was the rough hands of the waitress again.

As she cleared the table, bringing me back to the kitchen.

Where some kid with a background in torture

and wrinkly fingers tried to hold me underwater

for some minutes.

Soccer Moms of the Hitler Youth

Notice they always tell you

you are raving bat shit mad when

you are at your most vulnerable.

The people who sunk the titanic

and claimed a shortage of lifeboats.

Nazi sympathizers

in slimming summer dresses

that make you love

them.

The mob mentality

a matter of numbers

and little else.

Soccer moms

of the Hitler

Youth.

And all those many pyramid scheme Asians

paying top dollar to look white

for jobs.

Coffee shop baristas

holding the large wooden key

to the only bathroom.

Leni Riefenstahl made good movies,

they just never had another love interest

other than the country.

And that makes some

uncomfortable.

A sleeping bag full

of bedbugs.

The moon in the sky

half full

like hiding.

Motion Pictures

I took a few pictures she had of her dead grandmother

off the mantle

and ran around in the street with them

yelling: MOTION PICTURES, MOTION PICTURES

waving them around in the wind as though dear old granny

could be brought back to life again

and I imagined her a young Jean Harlow or Bette Davis

out on the town with all the finest folks

never once constipated or behind on rent like regular people get

and I thought I was doing old granny a favour

but the woman chasing me down the street

thought different.

Later at her place, she said that was very insensitive of me.

To put granny in motion pictures like that.

She was a beautiful woman, she said.

Why do you think I cast her?,

I asked.

Tigers in the Tall Grass, Panthers in the Street

It is not the tigers in the tall grass

that cause such consternation

and terror.

They seem a world away

and most

will end up in zoo exhibits

doing circus tricks to avoid a flogging

or as soon-to-be mantelpiece trophies

caught in the poacher’s crosshairs.

No,

it is not the tigers in the tall grass

(even the man eating ones)

that incite our fear,

but rather

the panthers

in the street.

You know the ones.

Black

angry

and well organized.

Poised to strike

at the heart of white America

for centuries of injustice.

The panthers in the street

are the star of the nightly news.

5'10

medium build

caught in a shootout with police.

A built in boogie man

for the national consciousness.

Of course,

the panthers in the street

are just a red herring.

They always have been.

And with time,

the panthers in the street

will meet the same fate

as the tigers in the tall grass.

Both

just mounted-head trophies

of the real predator.

Only Gyms I Know Are Morrison and Jones

I do not understand those men that take steroids.

Veiny angry giants with raisins for testicles.

I want to be scrawny and unassuming

so that no one ever asks me to help them move.

I don’t want to lift anything.

This is all natural baby, can you believe that?

Of course they can.

I let my driver’s licence expire as well

so I am not asked to drive anyone around

either.

I want to be a last resort only kinda guy.

No human growth hormone for me.

I want to be small enough to fit into Tinker Bell’s

dusty pocket.

Rage Against the Vending Machine

You place the coins in the slot

listen to them tumble down mechanical gullets

petering out of sound

and you are careful to make your selection

pushing the right button but nothing happens

so you push it once again, this time harder

as though ringing a shoddy doorbell

then again and again and again

but nothing.

Then you step back, retreat from the fray

for perspective.

There is none.

So you grab the damn thing, shake it violently.

Cuss the vending machine out as you lift it off the ground in anger.

Reaching first into the slot to get your purchase

then into the change slot,

you find nothing.

Punching and kicking its shiny glass face in

finally

because you have been taken again

in a world of takers.

Ghost Horses of the Motor City

We are headed back down to the motor city

in a few weeks.

To catch a music concert at Ford Field

and eat in Greektown.

The place we are staying at in midtown is a group

of four converted stable houses which some purport

to be haunted.

Haunted by what, who knows:

one of those sobbing period women who stand in windows

in strange dress always moaning about something

or the classic slammer of doors perhaps

or some ghost horses clopping around eternity.

It is a converted stable after all.

I don’t want the others, but the ghost horses would

be okay.

Disembodied snorting from the end of the bed.

And a shuttle every fifteen minutes to take you

into downtown Detroit.

Today

Stumble into the wall

and blame the wall.

Trip over the sidewalk

and stare back accusingly

over the sidewalk.

Fall down half a flight of stairs

and curse the many angles

of modern carpentry.

The cut and grain of the wood.

The railing too far off to make

a difference.

Sooner or later

it will have to be your

fault.

But no one said it had

to be today.

Pete’s Car Wash

We are parked on the gravel

outside Pete’s Car Wash

in the new industrial park

outside of town

waiting for one of the wash bays

to open up.

Waiting our turn just as our parents once taught us we must

even though she is an only child

and my memories of the playground

are not so fond.

I hope we don’t get the one with the nesting birds

on the lighting grill,

she says,

they always attack the vehicle

and I feel bad.

I pretend not to know why they would choose

such a lousy nesting sight,

but the light provides warmth

and the circling hawk above

is hard to miss.

The board of education parks all its school buses

for the area

in a yard across the street.

The buses look strange and unfamiliar

without children in them.

As though things are meant to do things

just as people are meant to do things

and when they do not, they seem

out of place.

Like candy apple at a funeral.

When it is our turn

we get the wash bay with the nesting

birds.

One male, one female,

and their young.

Swooping down and squawking

so that we try to be quick

as we can.

Orson Welles

ate

and

drank

himself

to

death

when

he

couldn’t

make

movies

anymore

sitting

alone

at

his

favourite

restaurant

in

Paris

each

evening

while

both

the

kitchen

and

the

wine

cellar

struggled

to

keep

up.

Killshot

The assassin levelled me against the ledge of the window

and I had a perfect view of everything.

People pay lots of money for a view like this.

And then it was a waiting game.

The clock on the wall saying the same thing over and over again:

tick tock tick tock tick…

most unoriginal under the circumstances.

And when the time came, I felt a single strong recoil

through my back and shoulders.

Then I was back in the case and it was dark

and we must have been running down many flights of stairs

because they would not stop screaming out in pain

each time they were stepped on.

Hairy Situations

Never trust a bearded man.

His face has something to hide

even if he does not.

There are an army of razors out there

and still he does not partake.

Ask yourself why.

Caged rabbits eating their own black pellet feces

for luck.

I am a bearded man.

Do not trust me either.

I am looking for ways to fool you

right now

even though you may not

know it.

Pro-life Poem

Office illumination

perched on the incandescent

desk lamp precipice

talked down from jumping

by the janitorial

services

there are things to live for:

industrial vacuums in the dark

Memphis barbecue

pool skimmers with lizards living

in them…

The higher learning of schools

of fish.

And do not forget the sacrifice of aging stairwells.

Anything that goes down on office buildings

is fine in my books.

Creaky with arthritis.

The stapler joining paper in bent

matrimony.

While the garbage is emptied of its daily guts

so we can start again.

Pro-choice Poem

I call the pizza joint along Paris

and place an order for one large pizza

with four toppings

what to choose?

what to choose?

I’ll have bacon, ham, and pepperoni,

I say.

That’s only three, you have one more.

How about some pineapple, make it a Hawaiian?

Fruit on pizza?, I scratch my head,

that is not really me.

I go for vegetables before fruit

and even that is pushing it.

How about mushrooms or onions then?,

the phone asks.

Ah, hell no, mushrooms belong in the dirt

and onions make people cry.

I’m trying to be more positive this year,

so no onions.

Can I get chicken on it?,

I ask.

The phone tells me that chicken counts as two.

How about sausage?, I say.

The phone says that is good.

And it comes with a free six pack of coke

or you can mix and match.

Wow, you guys are really enlightened, I say,

make it two coke, two orange crush,

and two root beer.

The adventurous type, the phone laughs

plugging in my order.

And it comes with an order of cheesy breadsticks,

but the wings and potato skins are extra.

The breadsticks sound good,

I say.

And that comes with your choice of sauce:

garlic Caesar, ranch, or marinara?

Definitely Caesar, in spite of what Brutus

did to him.

Very good, the phone says.

And is that for pickup or delivery?

Delivery, I say,

my car is in the shop.

And is that all?, asks the phone.

It is.

That comes to $16.75.

How would you like to pay:

Visa, Interac, or MasterCard?

Can I pay in cash?,

I ask.

You sure can.

Is that everything?

It is.

Thanks for choosing *********.

*

We say our goodbyes

and it is

done.

Sex Tape with a Woman in a Vegetative State

He borrowed an old Hi-8 camera from a friend

and set it on the ledge of the bathroom vanity overlooking

his parent’s soaker tub

and he raided the refrigerator of all its vegetables

and built the likeness of a woman out of them,

then he took off all his clothes and pressed play

and got on top of the vegetable woman in the soaker tub

and pumped away until he finished.

And he talked dirty the whole time

into her ears of corn.

Sucking on her baby carrot nipples

until his lips were orange.

Then he uploaded the 7 minute video to YouTube

under the title: Sex Tape with a Woman in a Vegetative State.

To his surprise, it had more than a million hits in under 24 hours

before it was taken down.

When he was done with the vegetables he put them back in the fridge.

His mother’s weekly book club stir-fries never tasting so good.

Emergency Preparedness in the CBD

She has just come back from the Central Business District

with blood on her.

She tells me it is fake.

A concoction of food colouring and sugar water.

That they are doing emergency preparedness drills

and asked her if she would volunteer

as a victim.

She says they gave her lunch and everything.

Painted her up like a dead body

and asked her to lay on the pavement

for a few hours.

As the emergency services cleared the area

and took her vitals.

Traffic backed up worse than usual

so they could know if they

were ready.

An Open Letter to Flies

I apologise for the recent strips of fly paper, seems

rather drastic I know,

but your buzzing has become intolerable

of late, the many eyes upon me

at all hours

your maggot offspring in my sink

where the dishes go

we must have boundaries, countries do it

and seem to get good results

which reminds