He Brought His Canvases Over

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

He Brought His Canvases Over

and he kept hauling these giant paintings
through the front door
so that I began to wonder how he had carried
them all over, the cabbies get mad if you fill
their car with paintings because they know artists
are poor and someone will have to carry the
damn things, and he keeps passing me off to the next
one before I can even really see the last and asking me
if I think it is finished and I remind him that I am
not a painter and that high school was hard to finish
so I am probably not the best judge
and he tells me he quit smoking, hasn’t sucked
a single glory stick in weeks and I put some tea on
to steep because I can see we will be here for a while…  
do you need some help?, I ask.
I can manage, he assures me. There are only
a couple more.
I watch him bring them in like an invading
army making its last entrance
into the spackled bowels of faulty plumbing.

.

About the Author: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Cultural Weekly, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.