Ryan Quinn Flanagan- A Poem

Outbreak

The pathogens are virulent

and determined,

can kill a man in twenty minutes

or less,

most women take longer

than that -

and the man in the elevator

will not speak to me

because he has groceries

and I have a beard -

the working man

and the other

brought together

once more -

and the silence between us

says words like bamboozled 

and fettuccini       

and I laugh;         

getting off            

a few floors before 

my clean cut friend

of the paper brown

tomatoes.



Bio:  Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a wheezing asthmatic who enjoys short walks on the beach.  He lives deep in the Canadian Shield with his toaster oven and his muse, believing himself to be eternally hungry as many his poems are about food.