The Menace
The menace is 26 oz. of smoke at birth.
The menace is caged hatreds boiling.
The menace is the tips of rattlesnake warnings.
The menace is fallen comets dipped in paint.
The menace is ugly sex faces in scream.
The menace is voodoo bones for dice.
The menace is comradery losing the kiddie gloves.
The menace is MK Ultra monsters in hiding.
The menace is streaking across highways naked.
The menace is crushing beer cans with his head.
The menace is parking the car with explosives.
The menace would like to meet you in the dark.
The menace is beans with molasses for dinner.
The menace is saggy taints in the parade square.
The menace with these fists that ball and curl
in blood mastery.
The menace is digging deep at this hour.
The menace is out counting tornados.
Something the Ghost of Edgar Cayce Would Say
There are hiccups in the smoke break.
Burning cherries, and June bugs against the door.
Saucers of milk for the cats that come by.
Talks of a Death in Venice, and Tool from the speakers inside.
The body is shutting down, I can feel it.
Sounds like something the ghost of Edgar Cayce would say.
And Charger agreed that working straight doubles
is total bullshit! I love his primed indignance about everything.
How he brought Roman Candles to work,
to sell out of the back of his mother’s car.
No one wants to be employee of the month,
think of Joey Stalin and the disappeared.
Sounds like a band name, no?
There are hiccups in the smoke break.
Building a Retaining Wall
A freeman’s question, then?
Is a prison wall just a retaining wall
so the warden can retain his prisoners?
Keeping them all together, like a bag of marbles.
Ogling them every so often,
as one does a prize from the county fair.
On prisons: if the cage is personal enough,
it ensnares everyone: warden, guard, inmate just the same.
A complete denial, like telling the perfect lie.
Corso was in the clink, wasn’t he? Rimbaud too?
Lulled by the passing kites of imaginary friends.
Those most garrulous and lonely of wards.
Under lock and latch and tower, the hourless murk bemoods.
To lay each block, I shall need a settled foundation.
Rough these hands like the talons of soaring hawks.
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, Red Fez, Evergreen Review, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rusty Truck, Zygote in my Coffee, and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
