“SCREAMING MIME”
I should speak out when they abuse
This pasty-faced artist who decided to choose
Being trapped in silence with make-up queer
I may not speak, but I can hear
The taunts, the insults, and the hate
Towards street performers who refuse the bait
Of ridiculed anger through vulgar gestures
Believing performance is a continuing semester
Of learning to grow within painted smile
Ignore the assholes, concentrate on the child.
Who laughs with joy or open-mouthed wonder
Yet tosses no coins as my stomach thunders
Breaking the silence, begging for bread
My intestinal rumblings plead to be fed
A steady diet of human compassion
Through the clinking of coins in an appreciative reaction
To my ancient art and enduring hunger
Selling myself like a common whoremonger
Hoping to satisfy an insatiable crowd
In tight fitting Spandex, a seductive shroud
Ignoring lewd sneers at my exposed anatomy
That I've twisted and stretched in hopes it would flatter me
As my muscles contort and my body sings
A silent song that once entertained kings
Miss Unity is a writer and drag queen from upstate New York. Her essay collection ‘Who Killed Mabel Frost?’ will be published by SF/LD Books in 2023. Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Hunger Pains (Buttonhook Press).
Protective
Oh my fucking God
I hope you know
I truly love you
Had your...
Physical and mental attributes
Listed and ready
To make a mockery out of
As I roasted you alive
Despite you hurting me
In ways no one ever had before
I still can't bring myself
To say these things to you
Invisible girl
No one ever noticed
It killed you
And when they did notice
They drove by and barked at you
Well baby if you think that was traumatizing
Then the things I could say about you
Would make you want
To take your own life
Of course you're not reading this
You ghosted me and
Don't give a fuck how much it hurts
Yet here I am
Trying to save your feelings
One more time
Just in case you ever look back
From the beginning till the ending
All I ever wanted was to make you happy
So I don't want to say anything
To make you sad and upset now
Just in case you ever remember
That I exist
God’s heart is a Giant Tear: June 1, 2022
I was sad to see Louie’s close, I thought to myself.
At Lands’ End, today’s destination journey.
A place where I can find myself again.
One of the most beautiful sites in the world.
Where the ocean meets the land.
I come here to ground myself and breathe.
This is where the butterflies flutter and lizards sprawl, as families saunter,
near swallows and chickadees, pelicans, and gulls.
Ocean waves leaping and lapping.
Today whales are reported, by a woman with two tawny and white dogs.
She lets my Bella sniff her dogs, while she tells us of the whale spouts sparkling near the surface. “Now I see!”
I see the blowing just at the surface. Some spouts shoot up out of the waters,
others just to the surface. You can see the pod is swimming around the very blue waters.
The Golden Gate Bridge stands so tall and proud amidst the 1000-year-old Cypress trees!
Three young girls, led by a mother, stand on the large cement wall bench to take a selfie.
All giggles, for today we have a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The cars look like matchbox cars.
These are just some of the things our children taken away too soon, by angry teens, barely men, bearing arms.
Shooting at our children, Killing them!
Now, these children will never see these things I see.
Lost to us before they had a chance to choose where, they would journey,
on a free day like today. June 1, 2022.
The birds chirping; sounds to me, “Please, please, don’t shoot.”
Over and over. Yes, here at Lands’ End.
Over and over, they sing it again.
I look up to the clouds. I see God’s arms caressing, admiring, perfectly, tiny babies in the clouds created by He.
He admires each one before they are sent here.
Yet, these days, God’s heart is a giant tear.
Apocalypse Not Now
Things don’t look so grim to me at this juncture,
the roving blood goons with veiny neck effort
and pillows for fists,
believing there is strength in numbers
just as Vegas and the warring armies have taught them,
that fear can be mastered like an obedience school dog
off the chain,
and concealed weapons if
that fails.
Myself, I prefer a pair of mating ducks in the inner harbour.
Male with proud felt green head.
The female by his side and the young ones in tow.
Or a leaky faucet that refuses to fall in line.
Staring out of windows, I see windows staring back
at me.
Underwear friends
with spider veins for legs
so you know the fangs of pet store tarantulas
are real.
The Public Has a Right to Know Nothing
that is why it is the public
and the rest of it is
private,
but such blanket statements
from the blubbery populist blowhole
go over exceedingly well with
the idiot masses
which is why that fabricated argument concocted
by marketing
as to whether a Crisper was a chip
or a cracker
did so well
according to the people
down in accounting.
Axiom Reel
cut the room
cut the floor
spark an axiom reel
hard the hat
hard the landing
tell that bloody
pilot Turbulence
to land this role
nobody wants
or ever
asked
for.
The Hunt for Hairy Movember
I have grown over four inches in the past calendar year.
All horizontally.
My white whale of a belly swelled and distended
and alcoholic
as though some handsome shoe polish messiah
could be cut right out of me.
I have been practising my breathing.
Inhale then exhale, seems simple enough.
No more difficult than the divvy up of pub grub
chicken wings on the fly.
While Norway tracks me down.
And Japan readies her harpoons.
I was never long for this world,
but this is getting
ridiculous.
Duty Free
Quite simply unaccustomed to safe-cracked whistles,
all stock yard light shows
of the immersive disk drive blow up
queen shaved down into one final
ball of incendiary thunder
under silly perched aggrandizement,
and knowing what I know now,
I would have never sat in the airport
that long
in plastic blue bucket seats
watching clean shaven men drag their
entire lives behind them,
rushing to catch connector flights
onto places with other blue
bucket seats.
Kicking Cans
Kicking cans around long enough,
there is always the threat of botulism.
Explain this to your schoolyard bully
and they will punch you in the head
a little extra
for making them feel
stupid.
There is no advantage to being smart
until you are out of school and 85,
old enough to just not care
anymore.
The world will always be stupid.
With or without you in it.
15 Bucks
for a working DVD player
seems quite the deal
and we drive down to this
apartment complex
along Mississauga Avenue
and sit in the parking lot
waiting for the boyfriend
to come down.
Some young kid is smoking by the entrance,
so we get out and approach.
Asking if he is the boyfriend
and he says he is.
And he hands us fifteen bucks from his right pant pocket
and we give him the bag.
As we drive away,
the missus tells me she is glad
I came with her.
It is the first of the month
and the squirrely junkies
are looking to
score.
And I tell her it reminds me
of buying drugs back in the day.
Strength in numbers,
I get that.
Ghost Shows
I’ve seen those ghost shows
where the orbs of light fly into people,
I am not some hermit.
I have a local cable service provider.
My shrink does not believe in ghosts,
so I do not believe in ghosts:
go along to get along, right?
And I am sane as folded towels in the shape of dying swans.
I have not laughed at my own armpit farts
in years.
A learning curve, sure there is.
If you are intent on learning.
Don’t the blowjobs of university wind tunnels
seem way too easy?
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle though his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Sirens
When the branch snaps I feel it in my head
dry an orange gorge up licking air from blue
eyes my feet score sleep tones from bird alarms
the minute earth turns over the rock I’m clinging on
The underside of my day drones green deep in
gnash safe breathing the ties I’m on the wheel
against singing flames crush on black wood
cat on the deck snorts upcoming traffic hills
There’s no thrill to balk at in crumpled-up sun
slices tops of trees of grin juiced by my own blood
for the bugs mist down the middle difference between
my gut and its cousin full with disappearance on the lawn
Your depth horns reed pages into stitched skin
the branch I’m on means holding it to my bones
A pox
In the pinched morning hours thoughts have teeth
that hound with heat blossoms on his gray skin
swallow the creak of a half-broken fan
turning air over to watch what crawls beneath
He rewinds his gaze to savor his salvation
vacated sky streaked with blue boils over
green that clouds the streams with sharp hair
half scalped and left behind to gum the ignition
He’s not going anywhere, at home with tight sighs
breathing in the memory of cleaner Springs
coiled, turning over, saved for the usual fangs
where he bleeds the lake of everything that dies
There’s a sun rolling over calculated hills
There are blankets to cover up what kills
Your hymnal
On her wedding day a white dress full of ashes
blows down an aisle lined with sawdust pews
The music silences everyone and is itself mute
Empty churches possess a psychology
that only the dead can read
This is one way I won’t exist
This is a picture of me, silent dust
another way to save her
They say when he was young he was so thin
they feared the wind would blow him away
and it did, after they’d rubbed him smooth
Empty hymns press a threnody
into my hands, describing how the water whispers
how the boat mutters as it launches in the dark
The goddess of love
With late Spring in my nose the sun through sawtooth leaves
in a chain linked with birds an ivy steps over my open mouth
hums blunt lust of toads when I brush your nipples with cum
to the pond to silence lillies to leave light stains on the surface
popping errors off on trees with latent rise your warm is skin
to my pit in which chills wound an implied gust of wishes
Witchcraft in my noise the stun you thought on me for loaves
over my open mouth talks to mulch you to cover me in chains
runs front of most blood you draw across my thought to strum
along with broke clouds my moving very fast upon culled dust
loping rubs boots to be a parent to the rocks live on us meal
widens as your wise arms siphon freckled with stuffed eyes
Your rain bows only for the planet turns
intravenous sunshine is a goddess of love
Sex
I’m you
His Fairytale Wedding
Rome wasn’t into Shakespeare. He studied English for the sole thrill of contemporary post-modern theory; his forte was apocalyptic endings and zombie slaying. Post modern theory delved into the whole psyche of the nightmare behind the phantom. He could relate to the whole neglected inner child for a while until he found his true calling; he became an EMT. He saved lives. He breathed life into the defibrillator when a cardiac went into remission; his heart regained a natural rhythm at the tips of his fingers.
Rome found Julie that way. She was beautiful behind pale features and charcoal dark hair. She penciled her eyes in black and wore a corset. The woman behind the mascara and the exquisite red lips flatlined. He could not feel a pulse. He put the oxygen to her moist lips and shocked her heart. Her mother stood near by…
“She’s using that stuff again.” She said with a face as morose as a renaissance portrait.
Julie coughed. Her voice returned to her almost dead ambition: She used crystal meth to get high off toxins. She said she used to get by; to get off other things that were displeasing like abusive fathers and mothers.
Rome didn’t leave her side in the hospital. He was off the clock and stood by her side; she melted like chocolate to a candle stick when she saw him. Rome was muscular, tan, cut and reminded her of a golden bronze statue. A real Roman God.
“We almost lost you.” He said aside a mother who cried.
“I’m sorry darling.” Her mother Marietta said, “I’m sorry for all we’ve done to you.”
“She used to hit the pipe.” Julie confided to Rome.
They left the hospital together holding hands and the horizon was like a pink cloud against a purple sky. Around Julie the earth was incandescent like walking among the clouds.
He finally told her, “I used heroin.” He was sincere.
“How did you get off?”
“He found me dead. Like I found you.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
Rome was from a dirty and sinister past of users.
“It runs in the family. My uncle was a user.”
They had their entire life in common.
Beneath the early dawn of a rising sun they walked into another horizon of indigo and fuchsia.
That was when they were becoming golden like emanating something celestial within the light.
He said his farewell to her and explained, “if our lives were a fairytale I wouldn’t need to convince you that you needed saving…”
His words became a silence like a truce - she then knew it was her - it was she who needed to save herself.
All he could do was point the way and she knew; she kissed him and entered the golden gates of recovery where she found herself a therapist and a bit of candy like licorice to take the edge off.
Together again, they fantasized, consummating in marriage beneath the turquoise sun and rain that fell like lemons.
