Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Abandon Ship! by Ryan Quinn Flanagan


I can’t stay here any longer.
I can’t live like this.
With you.
All you do is sit there in your underwear and drink
and write dirty poems
that get rejected.
Or you sleep all day
while other men work.
You don’t like my cooking.
You don’t have to say anything,
I can tell.
And you never talk to me
anymore.
You just sit there in the dark.
Drinking, and arguing with the walls.
You think I’m sleeping in the next room,
but I can hear you at all hours.
I can’t live like this.
I won’t do it any longer.

I tried to get the Rubik’s cube to work,
but the colours wouldn’t
stay together.

Well,
aren’t you going to say
anything?

I tossed the Rubik’s cube on the couch
and went to the fridge
for a beer.

More drinking,
that’s your answer for everything,
drink, drink, drink.
Well, I won’t have it anymore.
She grabbed her suitcase by the door
and slid on her sandals.
Just as the rats
of a sinking vessel
abandon ship,


I’m out of
here.

Does that make you a rat?
I asked
pulling my head out of
the fridge
to peer around
the corner.
   
But she was already gone
and there was nothing
left to do

but
wonder.








Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Rye Whiskey Review, Outlaw Poetry Network, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.

3 comments:

  1. This is a very fierce little tale within a few very fierce lines. It rings sad and true. And, the visuals it conjures up are spot on.

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  2. Actually not unknown. Should have shown my name, Sarah Ito.

    ReplyDelete