Between Rounds
I staggered back to my corner between rounds.
The stool was already there.
He has no heart!
my corner said,
throwing water over my face.
Does the commission know that?
I asked.
Would you take this serious!
my corner yelled.
I winced as he took a Q-tip and pushed it against
a cut over my eye to soak up the blood.
His corner should take this serious,
they have a fighter with no heart,
I shot back.
Guess I won’t aim for the heart.
My corner said nothing.
Checking my nose to see if it was broken.
I’ll probably come back after the next round
and you’ll tell me he has no fists,
I smiled.
Then I’ll know you’re lying.
©2022 Ryan Quinn Flanagan All rights reserved.
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, Cajun Mutt Press, Outlaw Poetry Network, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
His new nook, Victory Slab, is coming soon from Cajun Mutt Press!! Look for it on December 8th.
cover art by J.D.C.IV
“Lay me out on the Victory Slab ‘cause the realm of poetry has been conquered again by RQF Flanagan bludgeons the perception of contemporary poetry with a sledgehammer to the chest shattering the sickening parade of: broken hearts, purposely unresolved trauma and snobbish elitism with a sledgehammer of truth…the hammer is still dirty though and…fun.”
—Mike Zone Editor in Chief of Dumpster Fire Press, Author of Fuck You: A Fucking Poetry Chap
“Victory Slab by Ryan Quinn Flanagan offers shoot-from-the-hip observations like an unfolding docudrama, part pulp fiction, part ripped-from-the-headlines, always grounded in visceral plainspoken reality. Hard-luck lessons elbowed out of the way by blind-lucky bastids, and many fraught moments brought to heel by earnest tenderness directed at real people by real people. Serious business. But this collection is also funny, in all senses, from ELL OH ELL to mere mild exhalations through the nose, as well as my favorite flavor: weird. The farted-upon couch. The dime store ronin. The flirty wafer-thin waitress making your wife jelly. “[R]oving blood goons with veiny neck effort / and pillows for fists.” These poems are nuts and you’ll love them for it.”
—Tony Brewer, author of psithurism and Pity for Sale