George Ryan
CARD Something tasteful and thoughtful and not too unusual might be what she would have requested but when she opened his card in which amorphous forms banged into things of random color she was delighted
DRIVERS When the taxi stopped at a light on York my driver lowered a window and spoke to the driver of a taxi that had moved alongside. I could not put a name to what their language was, but they seemed to know and like one another, prolonging their talk even after the light turned green. On the move once more, I told my driver that I often met Irish people here but rarely anyone I knew before. He said that he and the other driver both grew up in the same small town, but their families did not speak. It was only over here they got to know each other
BREAKFAST WITH FRIENDS She told visiting friends at the breakfast table that while her husband had always snored he had recently stopped breathing as well. When she poked him he snorted, breathing again. Things had worsened that very morning. He lay unbreathing beside her on the sheet with his blue eyes open and unseeing. A dead man lay next to her in bed! She poked him and he snorted, breathing and closed his eyes. She hit him on the forehead and kicked him until he fell out of bed. All the visiting friends at the breakfast table turned to look at her husband, eating scrambled egg. It was a dream, he said, maybe something she ate.
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George Ryan was born in Ireland and graduated from University College Dublin. He is a ghostwriter in New York City. Elkhound published his Finding Americas in October 2019. His poems are nearly all about incidents that involve real people in real places and use little heightened language.