He’ll Be Into Work On Monday. by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

My wife is up at Roulette and I am

walking around people watching.

It’s like being a peep freak but no one cares.

Everyone so engrossed in their own thing

that what you do really doesn’t matter.

I’m sure the eye in sky cares, but I’m not

counting cards or giving signals.  I’m just

walking around getting drunk trying to picture

who will be hanging in the bathroom first

after losing all this money.  And then I have to

go to the bathroom myself.  Black 2 if I were playing

roulette, but since I am not, I find a stall and drop

my pants.  It is the handicap stall at the end.

There is a change table in there for any

fathers who brought their new babies to

the casino so they could rub them for luck.

That tiny bald head like a genie out of a

bottle of Bourbon.  And wiping and flushing

and zipping up, I walk out of the stall and see

this guy in a suit standing over the urinal

on the phone with his boss promising that

he’ll be into work on Monday.  That is how things

are done out in the desert.  Everything on the fly.

Returning to the high limit tables, I watch some guy

in a floral t-shirt drop 40gs in 10 minutes.  

I feel a little sick even if he does not.

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, Outlaw Poetry Network, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.