Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra Shoot At the Stars
No couch could cushion our lives,
and I think of Ava and Frank driving into the desert,
restless as two honey badgers in spirited flirt.
Under that big night sky of back talk spin,
Frank grabbed his gun from the glove box
and began shooting at the stars.
Ava was quick to join him, taking aim at
what she thought to be The Big Dipper
with a pistol of her own. Unloading on the
heavens and laughing hysterically with some
of that North Carolina hick the studio groomers
had tried so hard to hide. But the laugh came back,
as did the suspicions and the power drinking.
Frank found the death of those twinkling
little fuckers hilarious as well.
They were murdering the whole system,
one star at a time.
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.
