Poetry

Zoriah photo

By

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

A Group of Young Men with Hammers

The banks had all the money

so their windows were smashed.

By a group of young men with hammers

who knew nothing of basic carpentry.

In dark dress and balaclavas,

throwing spent canisters of tear gas

back at a line of their oppressors.

Who, banging their truncheons against their shields

like the audience at some hard rock concert,

began clearing the streets by force

and making many

arrests.

The City is Sick

all you can do is live around it

do not let it envelop you

do not let its sickness become

your sickness

this city of sweltering humidity

even at night

running a fever that will not break

the steam from the grates stunk through

with a vile desperate living

shirtless homeless men on stolen bicycles

riding in circles in the street

the many open sores on their bodies

oozing a slow monstrous death

the city is sick

and everyone in it

I lean against a wall short of breath

and become gum-stuck

pooling spit wads along the avenues

a personal minefield to walk

through

buzzing neon signs I cannot read

failing health inspections

duelling cabbies for the fare

pungent skunk weed from those

you pass in the street

projectile vomit

and the night girls

in heels

a bag lady chasing a raccoon

down the alley with a dirty syringe

the howling end of dayser

off his meds again

the city is sick

and no one wants to

recover

there is no way and no how

my bloodshot eyes follow the office towers

up to sky

and I grow dizzy with concrete

indifference

the sleeping bags without faces

bony despondent dogs chained to parking meters

and foaming at the mouth

the city is sick

the city is sick

looking for a way out

the subways have stopped

running

this city all around me

so that my knee gives out

and I hardly notice.

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.