EYE SCREAMS

RQF! DFP!

Dumpster Fire Press is proud to present our first August release

Ryan’s Quinn Flanagan’s latest poetry collection EYE FLUSHER

A new RQF collection! Dumpster Fire Press! That’s all you need to know! Powerhouse poet Ryan Quinn Flanagan like a machete wielding cross between Bukowski and BB King does not bow down before the Eye of Horus but is the elastic eye of the divine god-king himself through portraits of ordinary madness in a realm of anything but sane,tempered by a shaky social contract. Your optic nerves will be flushed from a whole of delusion in this one, setting the dumpsters of stagnant existence aflame!

Never Shit Your Own Pants 

Heidi came running down the hall  

and said that Frank had done it again. 

Amy was charge nurse, 

responsible for the entire building.

And all the residents at the Guildwick 

Home for the Elderly. 

Sam was sent with Heidi to deal with Frank. 

He did the same thing at least three times a week. 

Went into other residents’ rooms 

and stole their pants before shitting in them 

and walking around the ward. 

The smell was horrible. 

Even for seasoned nurses and staff. 

Ok Frank, pants off! 

said Sam. 

Heidi stood back to avoid the splatter. 

Don returned from lunch break and laughed. 

Ah Franky, I see there was an accident!

Frank said nothing. 

An acquired brain injury had left him  

largely mute. 

Sam double-gloved and ran off to dispose 

of the pants. 

Leaving Heidi and Don to clean Frank off 

and get him ready for bed. 

Whose pants do you think they were this time? 

asked Heidi.                  

Who knows, 

laughed Don. 

Frank kept cupping water in his hands 

and splashing it against the wall. 

His wife had died six years ago. 

Frank had no one now. 

Just a power of attorney who lived 

in a different city and couldn’t care in the least. 

It’s pretty smart if you think about it, 

Don said.                     

What is? 

asked Heidi. 

Never shit your own pants, 

Don said. 

Look in Frank’s closet. 

He has at least twenty pairs of pants, 

but never shits in any of those. 

Heidi looked over to the large brown wardrobe 

across the room and laughed. 

So you think Frank is some kinda genius or something? 

Heidi laughed. 

Crazy, not stupid!

Don said. 

I think you’re going to steal other people’s pants 

when your time comes, 

Heidi nudged Don jokingly. 

I’ll have my own gig, 

announced Don. 

Shit really isn’t my thing. 

Are pants? 

joked Heidi. 

Just then, 

Sam returned to check and see 

how things were going with Frank 

who kept grabbing at the towel 

as Don dried him off. 

I need you to go check on Natalie, 

Sam told Heidi. 

She’s up and screaming bloody murder again. 

Heidi ran off to check on Natalie. 

Amy was at the nurse’s station. 

Having already begun the paperwork  

on Frank’s latest incident.

She said I looked like Dimebag Darrell

and I told her

I didn’t know

who that was

and she told me

he was this big metal

guitar god

who was shot

and killed

on stage during

a show

and I wondered

if I looked

like poor old Dimebag

before or after

he was killed,

but I didn’t ask

her that

because I wasn’t

a complete asshole

yet.

Komorebi  

Drugless eyes on the space filter, 

the people of Lemuria in my Komorebi head – 

by penchant, by perchance, we need a byline; 

some way to understand why the leaves have curled 

like busy cigars, a question of light before  

everything else, William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea 

forever on loan and that spunky hockey man  

who calls teeth “chicklets” working the PA down at  

the arena with a thrilling wasabi pungence: 

my time in no man’s army is up, 

night cap invitations go unanswered as fog horns 

while splinters of a dying allegiance cut across 

the lattice fencing, all fury melts away like  

some sticky cold season lozenge.

Skin Motels

She says

we should find one of those

skin motels where half the known world

seems to park outside,

but no one ever stays.

One of those hobo joints

along the side of the highway

where the kid at the front desk

seems a little slow,

gives you a single mattress

and a scrambled television

for the week.

The curtains pulled over

like stand-in eyelids

you never once think of

again.

A sink of brown water

to throw over your yellow

nicotine face.

Cigarette burns

through the angry tartan

comforter.

Her screaming drunken legs in the air

like a mess of migrating birds.

Hoffa Makes a Comeback

They just started looking for Hoffa again.

Searched this old Jersey landfill last week.

You have to think they got a pretty credible tip

to go digging through all that garbage.

Waist-deep in the worst from the worst.

Some guilty catholic deathbed thing

with the priest and the whole deal.

Or someone pulling a laugher.

Fucking with the Feds like so many times before.

Spinning yarns over the wire.

So they can hear their own voice

played back in court.

An army of news vans lined up out front.

All those long antennas.

Like fly-by-night water towers

of lipstick, ratings

and rumour.

I’ve Never Once Been a Man Who Didn’t Have it Coming  

Some things are deserved, 

the rest is peddled as dopey bait shop knowledge – 

I’ve never once been a man who didn’t have it coming, 

that slippery uppercut nestled under glassy jaw, 

the book thrown at you with an entire library  

of clunky adamant hate; 

my filthy doomsday eyes forever on the blood shot, 

a slave to skinless, boneless puppy mill science 

so that the words become bodies, 

one long annotated excuse  

of cries and explanation.