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Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Factory Stacks

driving into Sudbury
from the West
the scars of man spill over
a billowing drug buy
sky

rock that has been there
for tens of thousands of years
blown away in an instant
for a new double lane
highway

and they bury the slag
so you never see it,
the grass an unnatural green
after a couple of years

so there are jobs
and quotas

and things can go on
like before

the hitchhiker along the side
of the road
thumbing his way to house parties
where things

go
missing.

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, Rusty Truck, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

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