Poetry

AFP photo

By

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Funeral Poem

His grandmother had died in such a way that was hardly sudden

the slow methodical morphine drip of boa constriction

so that God comes into question

and when they put her in the ground

it was raining so heavily that the pall bearers

had to be careful

their dry mouth hangovers all working against them

from the evening previous

the living will go on living, hard to blame them for that

but his grandmother had looked pale at the showing

whiter then he had seen

that’s how they come when they are bloodless

dry sticks of un-living, but you do not tell a friend that

so we walked back to the cars in the rain

couples pairing off to whisper to themselves

making dinner plans under many

black umbrellas.

Guardian Angels Do Not Live in Duplexes

malicious psychopathy

dread on a stick

lark with seraphim throat

lozenges to a slack jawed tupperware king

and guardian angels do not live in duplexes

candle bottoms all alight

the expectant dark of darkened rooms

stringy fly paper heart

sleepless probing hands of plunder

for a door that locks from

the inside.

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.