ryan quinn flanagan | a gas chamber with shaved legs

Ryan Quinn Flanagan

A Gas Chamber with Shaved Legs

She cheated on me
(many times)
left indicators around the house
for me to find
like some truculent game of hide
and seek,
laughing at me
when I couldn’t;
a cruel and vile woman
of the lowest order,
with enough ass to level Everest
and enough mind to
ruin any
man…

You begin to wonder
why such things are created;
like one way traffic
and the cluster
bomb,
things that seem so cruel
and unusual
as they
say;
a gas chamber
with shaved
legs.

I found out later
that this one
used to take it in the mouth
from down syndrome kids
with spider man stickers
on their lunch pails
as a way of telling me
that I was less a man
than that.

I felt bad for me.
And I felt bad for the
down syndromes.

To have something so guilty
on the loose,
free and beyond all
reproach,
as so many rot away
in the jails of
this land;
babbling group shower
pushup men
that would die to know
a woman
such as this,
and that is their only
crime.