Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Two Bottle Caps and a Gas Station Receipt

I reach down into my pocket

thinking twisted blow up dolls

back into balloon animals.

Feeling around for my wallet

that is a no show. 

Just two bottle caps and a gas

station receipt.

I toss the receipt

and finger around the bottle caps

like those Chinese stress balls

that professional assholes swear by.

The heavy melanoma sun over my face.

A rock in my shoe that makes me

walk with a limp I don’t have.

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, Live Nude Poems, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.