No freckles in a foxhole

No reason to go straight
with all the roads and learning
on the curve.

No freckles in a foxhole,
that’s what I always say with
no one around.

Slowly spooning cubes of green Jell-O
out of the Borg continuum.

Wishing Hitchcock Photography 
was in charge of all my best close-ups.

Midnight taco trucks playing greasy  
shell games to God. 

Everyone down at the Employment Center 
in line looking for the works.
 
Land Bridge

Once they close the damn thing down,
you start to think of all the circuitry involved, 
that intricate green board of so many unpleasantries, 
a murder of crows for silicon valley, the cops on the scene 
with massive hangovers so you can watch your
toilet water tax dollars be flushed away;
truckers like lonely monks without the sash, 
but I could never accept the cabin like a coffin 
for so many miles; all those rules of the road,
that carnival itch of a six day beard –
how closely I resemble this land bridge 
of complex carbohydrates, a bedside table 
full of happier times I can hardly remember
standing over this buzzing ice machine waiting 
on another glacial pull from the heavy-eyed doldrums 
you find west of the Rockies.

 
OshKosh Brioche 

You can’t take the vaude out of the ville 
no matter how small the population gets
and it’s OskKosh brioche, all factory stacks 
to smoke; the smoker of cigarettes travelling 
around in packs, dry-mouth nicotine armies
blowing smoke rings of unholy matrimony,
during those many long lunch hours
that seem like they should be for more than drugs
but never get there in the late-January
snowshoe sense.
 
Prayer Mats

in the sprawling 
dry mouth desert

spitting hump day camels 
at market 

going Bedouin 
for the long
haul

all those prayer mat Fridays 
facing the East instead
of liquidation 

waiting for some 
simple scorpion sting 
around the fire  

under all those stars 
from the sharing fellowship 
heavens

of the waiting 
galactic federation.
 
Long Gone

He said he worked at a gas chamber
and it took me three hours to figure out 
he had said gas station,
but by then I was sitting at home
and he was long gone
like all those shoot ‘em up extras
in spaghetti westerns 
that don’t even live as long 
as the horses.
 
She Smacks Her Lips 

Those ugly gusts of wind 
are almost enough to keep 
the once-friendly dog parks 
indoors.

I threaten to drop the bomb
even though I have never had the bomb
and any of its known accomplices 
in my popular employ.

She smacks her lips 
so you know she is preparing 
to say something important
even if it doesn’t mean shit to 
anyone else.

On that slippery plastic couch 
my grandmother once died on with 
a tongue so thick it could be some cement mixer 
ham steak the kiddies can’t bite through
come dinner time.

Crack a tooth and cry on command.
Put all your problems to bed.
Sit up in the dark on a phone 
that threatens to 
come over.

Her snoring husband in the background
of a movie no one will 
ever remember 
seeing.
 
Name Plate

Nevermind the name plate,
you could be anyone’s failing blood feud,
pick umbilical at that bacteria-laden innie 
half a world away from the stringy pink placenta 
some performance artist in Europe insists
on eating to the great bemusement of a failing union –
standing inside that last payphone in town for warmth,
I blow across gloved hands out of habit,
watch the cheesemonger with mites for legs 
crawl home to some seasonal flood zone  
in the burbs; that scratching body lice of old records
along the bus route, no way to get anywhere
that ever pays near enough to make it
in a naked 

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.