They Want You to Do It. By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I didn’t die.

They want you to go away and say nothing,

claim it was too late, that they couldn’t help you.

You were a lost cause.

Truth is, they get off on this shit,

the power over life and death and this one 

from the finest schools dared me to do it 

and showed me the door.

Nothing would have made her happier.

I told her my family history 

upon doctor referral 

and opened up for the first time honestly 

about how close I was 

and this one “wished me luck with that.”

So I took a job as a telemarketer

selling freezer orders of beef for $5.75/hr.

targeting new pensioners with loved ones 

that had just died;

you can’t feel any worse than a four hour shift

of that, reading from a script until my friends would 

pick me up so I could get blind drunk 

at some God house in Letitia Heights.

But that broad totally got off on the power.

Kicking stockinged legs under professional desks 

that have been there forever.

There’s no telling how many she killed.

I decided right there that I would not kill myself.

Because of people just like that.

That I would start all over again.

Become something she would hate.

Write so many poems that the words

continued on forever.

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, Under The Bleachers, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.