“Let it fly”

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.