Ryan Quinn Flanagan- Three Poems

Crosshairs

I was smart enough to know that Disney

killed Bambi’s mother,
in that theatre
all those years ago
I was the first one
crying out: THEY SHOT BAMBI’S MOTHER!

All the other children

began to cry,
one after the
other.

With popcorn
between bathroom breaks
before anyone knew what cigarette burns
were.

She seems proud of the fact
the same way Hubble
calls itself
a telescope.

Her mother
tried to reassure her
all the way back
to the car,
but somehow
she always knew
better.



Oops…

We hang tissue boxes on all the doors

of the competent patients
at work
so that the dementia cases
won’t try to go into their
rooms.

And that works?

 Of course.

They see the box instead of a door handle
and shuffle on.

We also place black mats outside
all the rooms
of non-dementia patients
because those with dementia
see it as a void or a black hole
and will not cross the
threshold.

Does the general public know this,

I ask,
I mean the family of those
concerned?

Of course not, she says,

and you have to promise not to tell
anybody.
 


European Short Hair

The headshrinkers
up your meds
because you should not
be turning into your
cat.        

Not at age 35.

Not ever.

I told them I bought a new litter box.

I just left out that it was for me.

The fewer people that know something, the better,

whoever said that was a flippin’
genius.

Like a young Pablo Picasso

seeing upside down noses
instead of the number
seven.

I wish I had said something like that,

but I’m just a cat
goddammit.



Bio: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a wheezing asthmatic who enjoys short walks on the beach. He lives deep in the Canadian Shield with his toaster oven and his muse, believing himself to be eternally hungry as many his poems are about food.