RYAN QUINN FLANAGAN

LATE BREAKFAST AT RUBY’S DINER

My wife and I
are sitting at a table
by the window.

Reading each other
all the old
beach signs on the wall
at the Ruby’s Diner
at the end of
the pier.

I am having a late breakfast,
scrambled eggs and crispy bacon.

She has ordered
the Huevos Rancheros,
seems happier than a pod
of frolicking dolphins.

Sprinkles of sun
bouncing off the forever
water.

When we are finished,
we walk back down the pier.

Past the old fishermen
at their boning stations,
and the pelicans that think
they are being cagey
each time they step closer.

My wife buys a Republic of California
bag sporting that iconic bear.

From the 2-for-1 T-shirt guy
with the racks of kitschy postcards
out front.

HIGH JACK

Plenty of bends in the rules,
and High Jack stole a hot air balloon and took off for other destinations,
working the fire from the basket faster than those on the ground
could stop him and the police were called, but all they could do
was follow the balloon as it crossed roadways, once it was out of the city
and over farm fields there was nothing they could do but wait for
High Jack to come back or ditch the bloody thing, which they found
resting in a cornfield four days later:
a threshing machine, one balloon, no Jack.

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: The New York Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Beach Chair Press, Borderless Journal, Setu, The Literary Underground and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.