Poetry

Pan Chaoyue photo

By

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Uncivil is the War

They beam pictures back

from Syria

and I think to myself:

what did you expect?

War is brutal

and civil wars are

the worst.

And you went and armed

one side

and let someone else

arm the other

and now you are surprised

when the mud

got dirty.

And it is the people that lose.

It is always the people.

While competing interests compete

at interest.

What did you expect?

The Anarchists

ran through the streets

in ski masks

smashing in the windows

of big name eateries

and hurling Molotov cocktails

at all the banking conglomerates

in groups of seven

to ten

with access to the underground

so the authorities

could never nab just

one of them.

Talk About It

She said we weren’t supposed to talk about it

which meant we did nothing but talk

about it for the next seven days.

Every angle.

All the minutiae.

In every room of the house.

In different houses.

Even out in public.

We talked and talked and talked

and talked and talked…

And the more we talked about it,

the more she said we shouldn’t talk

about it.

I caught her talking in her sleep.

I guess I don’t have to tell you

what about.

And feeling cheated that she was talking

about it without me,

I elbowed her awake so we could

talk about it some more.

Mrs. Ferron

I am forever that

little kid

fenced in and starving

in the backyard

of this religious nut

along Bernick Drive

who will only feed

her own children

and my little brother

is with me

but I have been taught

that it is wrong to rat

so we go without

while my parents are

at work

until my little brother

finally tells them

and we never have

to go back there

again.

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.