LatinosUSA

Sample Poems

The Recital

A children’s recital.
Taking turns at the piano.
A matronly instructor standing over each child.
A thin milling of parents half-seated in the front room
of a modest house.
With a doorbell that lights up after dark.
Listening half-attentively while the children 
strike each note in noticeable fear.
A table of cookies and refreshments just feet away.
A tower of overturned plastic cups awaiting false thirst.
The hands need something to do when they are not clapping.
Then it is home to bed.
A school night for each of our dear little Mozarts. 
The matron instructor closing the lid on her piano. 
Cleaning up bunched napkins of cookie crumbs 
and partially filled cups. 
There will be no more music.
A sudden creaking of stairs under the weight.

(First appeared in Word Dish)

Jukebox Road

A hairless cat walked by in the body of a bald man.
Everyone hummed to themselves along jukebox road.
Felix thought of overturned shopping carts with the wheels removed.
How everyone climbed into cold beds and up even colder mountains.
The way you could see your breath and never the future.

It was geisha girls and appendectomies.
Townhouses with ridiculous pygmy yards fenced in by a sea of black wrought iron.
Felix found himself humming without even thinking about it.
His fingers dancing along the side of his torn pant leg. 

The impaled sky darkened, threatening to spill its guts.
A young woman without shoes stood tiptoed by the mailbox.
The exposed brick running around nude under vinyl trench coats.
The uncontrolled tremor in Felix’s hand, an imminent earthquake.
Covered up by the way dried chewing gum broke into song.

(First appeared in ppigpenn)

© Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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Author Biography

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, Rusty Truck, Evergreen Review, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash and The Blue Collar Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.