RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

REINCARNATION CAT

There is this shop on Royal Street
down in New Orleans
that sells Mardi Gras masks
and postcards to tourists,
and the lady who works the cash
has a stool set up beside the register
where this large tabby cat sits
and smells the fingers of all the customers,
watching money switch hands for goods.
The lady swears the cat is the reincarnation
of her dead husband, still helping run the business
just as he has always done.
Hopping down periodically to walk over
and sit in the doorway to watch the foot traffic
in the French Quarter.
If it is all an act, it is a convincing one.
We leave the store feeling good.
About life and reincarnation and the cat.
With our masks and postcards
and a little less money than
we had before.

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, Borderless Journal, Setu, River Dog, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.