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That Couch You Fart All Over
Nothing has legs
this side of the fixed
off-track betting
horse track
and I sit
on that couch
you fart all over
in the basement
with that early Beatles
wall mural
where Ringo knows
that he may be out
of his depth
and the ping pong table
with only one
paddle
like spanking
a naughty child
back out of the braving
chalkboard hinterlands
over cheap orange carpet
that may as well
be a smashed pumpkin
all out of seed
which is just how I see myself
whenever those many
old thoughts come back
around.
Carved Initials No One Could Place
She leaned in against the bar
waiting for him to buy her a drink
like so many others before,
smiling the way dancing cobras of India
gyrate out of poor wicker
baskets
before he took his Buck knife out
and rammed it down through her hand
into the bar
beside the carved initials
no one could place
and a cocktail napkin
as though no one ever pissed themselves
in valet parking
black and tie
and she screamed
like someone who had never felt
any real pain
before
and that somehow made all the others
feel a little better
about all theirs
and then he paid up
and walked out
just as he
came
and no one said anything
while the old juke
played.
Some of the Funniest Men I’ve Known Are Pillows
He couldn’t write a novel
and poetry doesn’t sell,
so he took a job in New York
writing jokes for some late night cut-up
with hair that wouldn’t move
if you played it the
Ode to Joy
and the money was good,
but the mirror was
not,
this face kept looking back at him
at all hours
and he thought of artificial
sweetener;
how the studio audience would laugh at anything
because they were idiots on command
and he knew that.
Long Day
Getting home from work,
the couch is waiting.
I fall into it as others fall out of love.
Easy as that. Comfortable.
Without showering.
Kicking my boots off,
but that is it.
As the two bike thieves across the street
share a beer on the front porch.
Sizing up the pedalling children in bike helmets.
Noting where they live.
The casual way they lean their bicycles up against the house
and run inside for dinner.
Running an icepack over my head,
I lean back and close my eyes.
Three hours later it is dark.
A family of raccoons sniffing around
the back window.
You can always tell the brave one.
The one that won’t make it.
Coming right up to the screen,
trying to figure a way in.
If I had a woman, he would take her too.
Furry little motherfucker!
Plastered, Like the Walls
He woke up
to find his friend standing
over him with an odd expressionless
face.
“Hey man…”
Then the eyes flicked back to normal
like you see with sharks
and his friend greeted him
as well.
Afterwards, he played it off as nothing,
but it disturbed him.
Was his friend perhaps gay and wishing to experiment?
Did he want to kill him in his sleep?
Or perhaps some other design he had not thought of?
He decided right off
that there would be no more sleepovers.
No matter how drunk
he got.
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, Terror House Magazine, The New York Quarterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Rye Whiskey Review, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.