PATCHING OVER AT THE ALTA VISTA MOTEL by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

The bikes kept showing up.
Filling the lot of the Alta Vista Motel
with a zombie’s idling exhaust.

MacLean and Spanish were inside the room.
Making sure the new boys patching over
dropped old allegiances on the bed.

Spanish ran a meth lab out in the woods
and MacLean fire-bombed rival stash houses.
What they did was for the club,
MacLean and Spanish could not stand each other.

But the new ranks did not need to know such things.
Taken to a burn pit out back to incinerate
their old identities.

Streams of liter fluid over everything.

Spanish seemed twitchier than normal.
MacLean was sure he’d become both cook and customer.

The new boys put on their new patches.
There would be a huge party back at the clubhouse.

Spanish was fucking MacLean’s old lady.
Usually from behind, over all those kegs that would
not drink themselves.

 

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, Horror Sleaze Trash, Cold Rambler, Zygote in My Coffee, Rusty Truck and The Oklahoma Review.

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