At the Public Pool
“My dog is so stupid,”
this man in a checkered shirt
points and says to the guy
beside him.
I look over to a patch of grass
and see a scraggly little dog
chasing its own tail.
Then I see the man’s kid
in the shallow end of the pool,
making vroom vroom noises
as he spins in ever tighter circles.
Yeah buddy, the dog is the issue,
I think to myself.
The towels by the cabana
look like they’ve been folded
by a Tasmanian devil.
Palms in potted cozies
tipping over.
A real shitshow
all around.
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: The New York Quarterly, Red Fez, Evergreen Review, The Literary Underground, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rusty Truck, Zygote in my Coffee, and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
