homeless man
who smells worse than sour milk
held right under your nose
used to come in every day
and buy one cup
with his scraped-up change
fell asleep every day
on the same black velvet couch
homeless man
got sent away every day
by one angry choking employee
who was usually me
“Febreze” was applied to the couch
after his departure each day
to take away the smell
and the memory

man who might
be homeless
who wears not so clean clothes
which might be the same ones every day
if i paid attention
buys a cup of coffee
and spends hours reading
every book and magazine he can find in the store
he is quiet
and stays awake
and eventually leaves
leaving no trace
no smell
and little memory

white kids
full of safety pins
and tattoos
and patches
and piercings
come in sometimes and run a tab
with someone else’s money
they have made-up names
the fat one has that unsavory odor
they used to keep a dog tied up outside
all day
while they loafed on couches
and made pay-phone calls
the dog was very cold
and often hungry
and would howl and whine
a tenant threatened to call authorities
and made them leave
now the dog is no longer with them
i wonder who they find to ink their skin
if they have no jobs
or homes

they put up pretty iron fences
in Little Five
so that the grey masses
could no longer sit there
they manage nonetheless
and i wonder aloud
what Little Five would be
without its riffraff
after all
my kind were riffraff once
still are to some people
i’ve been down on my luck
but maybe not that down
and now i live in a very nice apartment
down the street
from those pretty iron fences

Ponce de Leon Avenue
has a layer of grime
which can never quite
be spat and rubbed away
regardless of public funding
or luxury lofts
or Kroger renovations
it will always feel ghetto
which is why artists flock
and roost like pigeons
and they too
come downstairs and buy coffee
scraping their money
not from streets and begging
but from ashtrays
and pursebottoms

there is a thin line
it would seem
between struggling bourgeois artist
and local color vagrant
a line not so pretty
as wrought iron
but much
much
colder