Ryan Quinn Flanagan

ITALIAN SITARS COVERED IN NUTELLA

To talk grief down off a building
in the dream time,
that is how the good work gets done.
How the refreshers come to your door
for the knockers, asking after Italian
sitars covered in Nutella, leaving with
your only copy of The Edmonton Sun.
That platypus walk, arms like bent stems
of incense. Making for home
at a pace only the butcher’s cleaver
appears to know.

LAUNCHING FROM THE JETTY

A parade of beach chairs
during the summer high season.

Baking brown bottles of Coppertone
everywhere.

And four boys of wiry adolescence.
Launching from the jetty
in a small boat.

Trying to scare each other
with tales of man-eating creatures.

And the reek of rotting kelp downwind.

The squawking gulls above
in a circle of frenzy.

Fighting over a discarded condiment packet
from the nearby concession stand.

Where the beach event staff
lean over crooked picnic tables,
sharing fanciful conquests.

And the lady with the teased hair
pushes snow cones.

Those twinkling bulbs of look over here.

Bags of pink fairy floss
hung in straight succession.

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.