LatinosUSA

Sample Poems

Lucky Break

I am walking into the Foodland 
along Hillside Drive South
in Elliot Lake. 

This middle-aged woman outside
on her smoke break.

Jaundiced and wrinkled down the arms.
So many liver spots she could be confused
with a careless child’s colouring book.

I cannot read her name tag 
and it doesn’t matter.

Sitting on two stacked 
overturned red milk crates 
in a matching red cashier’s smock. 

With some burning cherry cigarette,
scratching at a triple book of scratch tickets
that is longer than her lap.

Never looking up once,
she is quite engrossed.

Her lucky break, I think to myself.
Though I know better.

The rich have a look.
This is not it.

(First appeared in Himalaya Diary)

The Kid with the Rattlesnake Kite 

This little boy 
pulls shed rattlesnake skin 
down off a tree branch.

Runs around 
with it dragging behind him
in the wind like a 
scaly forgotten kite.

An only child, no doubt.
Making his own fun.

Running right out of his shoes
with an unburdened excitement.

A noticeable brown cowlick 
refusing to be vanquished.

(First appeared in Himalaya Diary)

Pinnacle  
 
Crest not bade me soul – not a more perfect sentence in the  
language. Tops! The pinnacle! I wasn't there yet, for the crest had  
not bade me. The shoulders of my shirt cinched down between  
drowsy hanging arms, revealing a scraggly dark patch of chest hair.  
If there were gifts left to give, they would come by those splintered  
brazen workbench hands. Unshuttered windows, that briny  
squawking clime of distant sea air. Great parapets of lost concealments.  
Bilging heels gong-rung together in startled splay.  
Suddenly, like banshees wailing across the moors – it came!  
"Christ hath bathed my soul," the beautiful voice sparkled. I looked  
up from the pew to find a priest standing over me. Cherub-faced  
and nipper drunk. A smile like fresh linens. A great light! – "Crest  
not bade me soul," I muttered inaudibly. His way was fine too.

(First appeared in Borderless Journal)

© Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Paperback

Author Biography

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Rusty Truck, Evergreen Review, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash and The Blue Collar Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.