LatinosUSA

Sample Poems

Tippi Hedren Called

Tippi Hedren called,
I said.
She wants her birds back.

The woman I was with tried to shush
me with a finger to my mouth.

The pet shop kept the lizards beside the birds.
In these tiny little cages like loneliness  
under a hot light.

Some toothy sales kid on commission 
walked up and asked if he could be of any assistance.

It that any way to treat the lizard people?
I shouted.

Sorry sir, I don’t understand.

Your superiors, the lizard people.
Locked away like common muggers.

They seem happy,
he said.

Please ignore him,
I heard a voice from behind me.

Do you have any sharks?
I asked.
Besides the ones that work on commission,
am I right?

I work on commission,
the toothy kid admitted.

Not enough junior,
I smiled.

She was ignoring us both now.
Had moved onto the puppies and kittens
in the back.

That passive aggressive sign that always 
asks you not to knock
on the glass.

If she returned to the pet shop
or the mall, 
she never did it with me.

She got a dog, I know that much.
Some pure breed 
that would make Leni Riefenstahl
blush.

Superior slobber 
and all that shit.

No idea what happened to Captain Commission.
Probably started his own line of pet recliners 
and made a bundle.

Getting in on the ground floor
just like the elevator in my building
always does.

(First appeared in Setu)

Staying in the Room Where Her Ex-Husband Used to Beat Her for $49/Night

She seems to know I don’t have it in me,
staying in the room where her ex-husband used 
to beat her for $49/night,
the nice couple that own the place 
imploring us to pet their dying cone-headed dog 
as they handed us the key,
reassured that such matters are just a precaution,
that he kept itching where he should not itch 
which sits just fine with a man who has been itching 
the short and scragglies for almost a half century 
of higher gas and lower expectations
and she moves right in as though she never left
which makes me feel bad because this is a family place
and family should give you better although
it never really does.

(First appeared in Rusty Truck)

A Bar Mitzvah Made to Look like a Suicide 

Rabbi Rosen can be a stickler when it comes 
to reciting the Torah and stammering Lenny Horowitz
is really slogging through the theological jungle;   
it is painful to watch, friends and family gathered,
a Bar Mitzvah made to look like a suicide
and you get the feeling little Lenny doesn’t want to enter manhood
at all and who could blame him: wise boy!
And I can feel his face on fire, each new acne breakout 
establishing its own city limits.
That terrified cracking voice you can barely hear,
even at the front of the church –
poor little Lenny, he was such a nice boy;
helped his mother with the groceries 
on the long walk back for Ziemann’s.

(First appeared in US1 Worksheets 67 – Princeton University)

© Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan in interviewed on Quintessential Poetry about Kiss the Heathens.

Praise for «Kiss the Heathens«

Movie stars, birds, lizards, muggers, and sharks in an alphabet milkshake. Ryan comes out with haymakers and steel-toed boots. Crescendos, bombs, fuck you corvettes, and elevator men. The Mighty Quinn is from Ontario, Canada; where bears drive trucks and eat beaver meatloaf. I recommend this book; Ry is widely published. Since Bukowski is gone and my friend, Lyn Lifshin; I think Flanagan will become and deserves to be top wrangler on the small press ranch.—Catfish McDaris, underground legend

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a twisted bastard and I love it. His poetry is funnier than most. And it’s the dark kind. Is it ironic that gallows humor gives me pangs of nostalgia for the nineties when people didn’t give a fuck? This poet still doesn’t. I find his acid tongue refreshing, scenes of cynics, surly saints, the lost and lonely; Kiss the Heathens reports from the front lines of a working class world where the punchlines make painful points, and only a smirk can save your sanity.—Westley Heine, author of Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician & Squatter

The moments in Kiss the Heathens are grounded in the incidents of life—good or bad—but sprinkled with imagined insanity, so they feel real, even when they aren’t. “She seems to know I don’t have it in me,/staying in the room where her ex-husband used/to beat her for $49/night,/the nice couple that own the place/imploring us to pet their dying cone-headed dog/as they hand us the key.” It’s as though Flanagan takes us with him around town—to a pet store, a hotel, a gas station, a restaurant or its dishroom—and all the while he’s sign-posting what he makes of it all, with a teasing economy of language. “Of course I believe in god. I have a cat, don’t I?”—Kerry Trautman, author of Unknowable Things

“Of course I believe in God. I have a cat, don’t I?” And I believe in Ryan Quinn Flanagan. His newest collection, Kiss the Heathens, ruminates on what is right in front of us. Taking the ordinary and inspecting it with his poet’s eye, Ryan forces us to look at the world around us in a new light. Sure he is “not the first/to such discoveries,/but perhaps the first to care.” My favorite poem in the collection was “Badasses Don’t Live With Their Mother.” It made me think back to my favorite Robert Browning poem, “The Lost Leader.” With a critical eye and scathing words, both Ryan and Browning prove words are indeed mightier than the sword. From dreams to funerals, bathtubs to Legos, nothing escapes scrutiny. Kiss the Heathens is one of those books you’ll read again and find something new every time. Buy a copy for a friend. Or an enemy. Start “a gang war and supplied both sides.”—Karen Cline-Tardiff; Editor-in-Chief, Gnashing Teeth Publishing

Paperback Only

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.