When the Pleasure Palace Shut Down for Repairs
When
the pleasure palace
shut down for repairs
there was nowhere to go,
there was work, but no one wanted
to go there, with that stupid nametag
with your prison picture,
not that you’d been to prison,
but now you knew what you’d look
like if you did, and it wasn’t reassuring;
everyone needed the palace back:
happy hour urinals and that
consuming fog from the stage,
those dancing girls that took your money
and left you smiling in a way the
taxman never could.
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, The Literary Underground, 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.
