Note: Sean Flaherty died on January 4, 2015 at the age of 48 from cancer.
The world lost a father, a husband, a son, a poet, a game designer and a friend.
29 March 2007
Kentucky Truck Stop Shower
Nine bucks
gets you a
paper
shower mat,
a clean, ruddy towel,
squirt of shampoo
small bar of soap,
to wash off
all that car and driving,
to scrub away
the last song
to come into Spring City
that you sing out
to the business of mold
gathering in the grout
outside the stall
that’s just bigger than a trucker.
25 March 2009
After a Long Line
Thanks for your help with this project.
I don’t really like
where you ended up taking it,
but I understand
you’re quite busy
and I appreciate
the time you spent trying
to do something.
I keep remembering
that I always
thought
you were full of shit.
17 June 2011
Autumn Leaf and John
Autumn Leaf
was born on an ashram
up north
on a piece of land her parents owned,
John
was a math guy
making Wall Street money,
they both lived in the city,
radiation levels were getting too high:
babies grew too big
in the womb,
often killing the mother,
leaving the children feeble
or worse
and vexing, Mendelian mutations
were occurring
to a variety of the citizens:
accountants were spawning
extra eyes,
extra hands
and did away with sleep cycles,
bicycle messengers were growing
longer legs,
strippers
had tails
stretching out of their tailbones.
Autumn Leaf had a tail,
John had an extra thumb on each hand.
They met and fell in love at a doctor’s office in midtown.
John had a thing for her tail:
the fucking was epic.
Autumn Leaf’s parents
allowed the two
a house on a plot of land,
the mutations hadn’t started up north,
but
away from the city
all their time piled up on one another,
their love distorted.
One day
after another dismal effort to be intimate,
John sat at his desk
wearing a green v-neck T-shirt
and white boxers
with watermelons printed on them
eating an apple,
looking over some old work papers,
Autumn Leaf walked up to John’s desk,
her tail twitching,
whipping back and forth,
she looked at John
and told him
she didn’t love him anymore,
the length of his tongue
flapped out of his mouth,
bits of apple
falling onto his desk,
his face turned bright red,
his eyes bulged –
he watched with his left eye
as the right eye
shot out of his head
into a corner,
the top of his skull
cracked open,
the explosion
splattering the
robin’s egg-blue walls of the room
with pieces of his hot brain.
19 September 2011
The Stabbing Game
They switched the time of day
but every day for one year,
Monday through Friday
we had seventh grade science
with Mr. Stern,
after school,
Neil Brown and I
would tear over to Friendly’s or
Burger King
in his mom’s Camaro
and then,
hopped up on burgers and milkshakes
we’d fly
a brakeless Schwinn
down the hill in his driveway
over a jump made from an old plank and a few cinder blocks
and we’d hover over
the green downward slope of his back yard,
mid-air,
spinning the handlebars as many times as we could,
posing on the bike,
pre-Superman,
making
deliciously uncertain landings,
we had other classes together
during the day
but
throughout C-period
science class
we sat next to each other
as lab partners
and, when the room got quiet for a moment,
one of us would stab the other guy
as hard as we could
and, if you kept quiet when you got jabbed in the leg,
you got to stab the other guy,
we went for the thigh
since the muscles there
seemed invincible
and there was never much blood,
it hurt but,
strangely, it was a matter of suppressing laughter
at this stupid secret game
more than holding back shouts of pain,
we started with pencils
but we got a little scared
after chunks of lead
broke off in our thighs
so we switched over
to metal compasses,
using the stainless steel points instead –
we figured the punctures would be cleaner –
we never ratted each other out
and, maybe because he was smaller than us
or maybe because we did the work,
Mr. Stern seemed
unaware
of the stabbing game.
29 November 2011
Encyclopedia Brittanica
I met him
when I was six
going on seven,
he was the teacher
in the Sunday School my grandparents ran
at the local church,
his parents owned the house next door
to my grandparents’,
I met him a second time
five years later
in the autumn of nineteen seventy-nine,
deeply medicated
in a slow coma,
his lungs propped,
hoses and wires hanging
from all of him
my grandfather moved downstairs
to the guest room
in the house on Leslie Lane
solemn tanks of oxygen
standing watch
in the corner,
my mormor was out –
at seventy-two
she was still
actively doing,
teaching
aerobics,
hat-making,
tutoring chemistry students,
doing the make-up
for the town-players –
the Sunday School teacher came over
and started
talking about going to a seminary
so he could enter the clergy,
while we were
making tacos,
he started talking
girls, girls, girls
on the beach,
at college,
in the movies,
when I showed him my grandfather’s
stash of Playboy magazines
he reached down my pants,
the smell of ground corn in his mouth
choked me
when he leaned in,
“do you like that?”
stepping back
from this gross betrayal
I took the encyclopedia from the shelf
in both hands
and swung it like a baseball bat,
he sat up
like a monster in a horror movie
his nose made a little crunch
when he reached up to his face and said,
“…hey. That hurt.”
I hit him harder
when I swung the encyclopedia
the second time,
following through
all the way,
more like a golf swing
so he wouldn’t get up,
this time
his whole face
was soft and easy,
greasing the face of the book with wet blood.
7 February 2012
Five Punches
Don’t
eat
my
fucking
drugs.
28 February 2012
Majesty
Waiting on the jay, the em
or the zee
standing on the platform
on top
of the bee cue ee,
either side of the highway
two or three trees
tickle the bricks on
the nearest buildings
the way
I’d scratch your knees,
a sidetrack
from the anxious press
or lack
of an odd or even number less
or greater
into this passing stay,
the rushhh
rushhh,
rushhh
of the rainy highway.
18 April 2012
Note to a Friend
I have seen
your wife
naked
many times.
11 May 2012
Height Uptight
Around
six feet
after
a corrective
tissue massage
or
the needles and naps
of acu
puncture,
closer
to five
nine
when I’m really
pissed off.
24 May 2012
Work
I had a girl,
she didn’t like
to work,
she spent her days
in bars
admiring strippers
and
porn stars,
at night
when I got home
I’d walk into
our apartment
wearing a suit and tie
and,
if she was there,
and
if she wasn’t
too drunk
I’d let her
show me
what she learned.
22 June 2012
Note to an Artist
In
only
ten years
you
bloomed
from
a
pussy
huckstering
your
identity
into
a very large and
tidy cunt.
Originally Published October 31, 2012