By Ryan Quinn Flanagan
A DISAPPEARING DEFEAT
I have been that very stooped man
in disappearing defeat,
an indiscernible plaque by the darkened doorway
in Jakub Schikaneder’s A Street in Winter,
you can feel the bone-cold of that marvellous Czech oil,
that lone arching streetlamp passed with vague notice,
lights in the upstairs windows, you wish you could be those
people still inside with a familiar warmth, the twisting naked branches
and a stilted water tower in the near distance. Once you turn the corner
and stumble out of view. I know that man, I have made that walk
a million times. A fresh patch of snow crunching underfoot
with each bulky routed step.
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, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
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