suicide – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 03/27/24

March 27, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Heaven’s Gate

We were sitting around
in that basement party along Hickory Lane
when the Heaven’s Gate
came on the news.

Someone said:
All those people didn’t
just kill themselves!

Well, it wasn’t a serial killer,
someone else said.
How many murderers would it take
to break in and kill all those people?

I said nothing.
Nipping at a bottle of Scotch.
Listening to the various arguments.

Then they turned off the television
and cranked the stereo.

And I got real warm.
Like it was summer when
it wasn’t.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Cajun Mutt Press, Dumpster Fire Press, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 11/01/23

November 1, 2023November 1, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Hanging Kevin

I didn’t know until an aunt told me.
A few years after my family moved away
out of the neighborhood when
I was nine.

Different school and different friends.
But you remember those many cherished bicycle hours
like an original progenitor.

And they found my friend Kevin hanging in his
mother’s walk-in closet.
Discovered by his little sister Veronica, apparently.
In that unassuming duplex three doors down from our place
along Bernick Drive.

After their parents divorced
and a new stepfather moved in.
My aunt said the new man was hard on Kevin,
was said to be a mean drunk.

I don’t know if that drinking thing was true.
I was just a kid.

But I remember my father watching me.
As though I could be next.

Hearing about hanging Kevin one night after a soccer game.
Still in uniform, in that Rose Street basement while
my aunt Marilyn and my father caught up.

I didn’t know what to think or feel or say.
I was just a kid.
But the world didn’t seem to care about that.

So I didn’t say anything
and learned to stay very quiet
for years.

My father’s eyes all over me
like a nest of angry
hornets.

VICTORY SLAB (CajunMutt Press 2022) by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMVG66QY

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/26/23

July 27, 2023 James D. Casey IV

THE AFTERLIFE BLUES

Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath
and Alejandra Pizarnik
are sitting together
in a cafe called
the Afterlife Blues.

Pizarnik and Plath
drink black coffee
from white diner mugs.
Sexton just chain-smokes.

There’s nobody else
in the cafe except them
and a fat guy in a white apron,
who looks like Curly Howard
and occasionally appears
to offer refills
from the steaming pot
in his hand.

“I did it,” says Plath,
“with the oven in my kitchen.”

“I did it,” says Pizarnik,
“with a fistful of pills
in my bedroom.”

“I did it,” says Sexton,
“with the car in my garage.”

Plath sips her java.
“Didn’t you say
that yesterday?”

Pizarnik swirls
the dark liquid
in her mug.
“I can hear you
through your wolf mask,”
she says. “And you did.”

Sexton puffs on
her cigarette and scowls.
“Quit showing off,”
she says, exhaling.
“You don’t even know
what the fuck that means.”

Plath drums the sides
of her mug with her nails.
“Well, you did,” she says.

Sexton ashes on the floor
and licks her lips.
“Save it for someone
who gives a damn.”

Curly waddles in
through a swinging door,
brandishing his coffee pot.
“A little heat, ladies?”
he asks, brightly.

“No,” say all three
women in tandem.

“For the two-millionth time,”
adds Sexton, brushing
her brunette hair from her eyes
with a long, delicate finger.

“Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”
laughs Curly, as
he heads back
to the kitchen.

Jack Phillips Lowe is a resident of the Chicago area. His poems have appeared in Clutch 2023, Rye Whiskey Review and Poetry Super Highway. His most recent book, Flashbulb Danger (Middle Island Press, 2018), is available on Amazon. Lowe is currently working on a new poetry chapbook.