by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
We were as alone as two human beings
can be in the modern world
when he turned to me and told me
to just “let it fly”
so that I asked him if he meant
some long forgotten childhood kite
or clay pigeons meant for the gun
or perhaps one of those many weather balloons
that are always replacing aliens whenever
the government speaks with no authority
and his eyes said I should know
even though his hairy well-groomed mouth
said nothing, so that we just stood tall beside each other
like twin obelisks in the late afternoon,
capturing the last light of a simple guppy sun.
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: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Cultural Weekly, The Rye Whiskey Review and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.