discernable
in a doorway beneath oily pizza boxes,
damp paperbacks, a sleeping bag.
Streetcorner preacher casting aspersions
on the perfidy of someone named Jim
while we unbelievers run our small errands.
Comedians and cutups swap bluster
and the stub ends of other people’s cigarettes
under cover of a bus shelter. Outside
the grocery story, the sidewalk florist
and her sprays of loosestrife, larkspur,
ragweed, spurge. I buy two bunches,
drop them in a dumpster on the way
to a sunlit courtyard where I order coffee,
check my phone. Where a man prowls
the perimeter of my attention. His fingers
land like hornets on one tabletop,
then another. He bangs a window, kicks
over a chair. I maneuver to keep a table
between us. You good, friend? I ask, calmly
as I can. Fuck you Jim, he says. You’re not my friend.
You never been my friend.