Lucky Break, A poem by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Lucky Break

A Poem Composed by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

I am walking into the Foodland

along Hillside Drive, South

in Elliot Lake.

 

This middle-aged woman outside

on her smoke break.

 

Jaundiced and wrinkled down the arms.

So many liver spots she could be confused

with a careless child’s colouring book.

 

I cannot read her nametag

and it doesn’t matter.

 

Sitting on two stacked

overturned red milk crates

in a matching red cashier’s smock.

 

With some burning cherry cigarette,

scratching at a triple book of scratch tickets

that is longer than her lap.

 

Never looking up once,

she is quite engrossed.

 

Her lucky break, I think to myself.

Though I know better.

 

The rich have a look.

This is not it.

 

Bio of the Poet: 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, Himalaya Diary, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.  He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.