Poetry Collection by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

For a Most Extraordinary Woman

 

she does not read the stuff

and I admire her all the more for that

to separate oneself is to create distance

 

to walk past used car lots

and know that you have been used

in the same way

 

to sleep beside the same man

for forty years

and never once let him

know you.

 

 

The Best Cities in the World Are the Ones that Never Stop Bleeding

 

This bum

in downtown Montreal

tried to hand me a flier

I had to take

because some cheap dago pimp had stuck him

right in the face

and he was

dying

 

and though it seemed the man had indeed been stabbed in the face

with a rather sharp object

and was bleeding profusely

I could not understand his logic

 

so I crossed at the lights

and walked back to the hostel

with my bottle under

my arm,

 

the hooker

in the stairwell

dressed as wonder

woman

 

on her way

out.

 

 

Saul into Paul

 

He was born

as a man

 

but lived as a

woman.

 

Highschool change rooms

were uncomfortable.

 

His father

despised his love

of dolls.

 

And clothes.

His mother’s to be exact.

And her makeup.

 

Then he moved out on his own

had the operation

and everything

changed.

 

Saul in Paul.

 

Or Pauline

as her friends

now called

her.

 

And she never found god

because there was no god,

but she found a job in the city

that paid well

 

and a man who loved her

for who she was

 

and that was

enough.

 

 

Spit Wads

 

on the

pavement

 

be careful

where you step

 

others

have come before

and felt the

need

 

to memorialize

that.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.