Poetry

Karim Corban photo

By

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Will You Die For The Republic?

He had just moved in next door

with his family from America

and showed me this old sign that said:

WILL YOU DIE FOR THE REPUBLIC?

and somehow it didn’t seem like

a real question at all,

but just the public all over again

a re-public

of sorts

but he told me that it was very expensive,

that his father loved it more than his mother

and him combined

which seemed very strange

to me back then

being a young Canadian boy

from the sticks.

Folding in on Myself in a Fit of Origami

You’d think husbandry would be the art

of being a husband,

but it’s not.

So I get to thinking about many things

that should be something else.

Fold in on myself in a fit of origami.

Lay in the dark feeling the weight

of obese eyelids.

Fitting rooms where nothing fits.

The mirrors all like those glass acid trips

at the carnival.

The oil spill of precision bombing.

Secret shoppers that everyone knows.

The anger management of active volcanoes

ready to blow.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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.