Charity C. Tran


two men in sleeping bags
on black marble slab
lie outside a building
on Shatto Place

two men with scruffy jaws
dirt beneath their fingernails
wearing layered clothing
doused with the acrid cologne
of LA elements

one waves a cigarette in the night
as the two lie beneath
dim fluorescent flood light
conversing while tobacco smoke
lingers in the air

cigarette man stays on as listener
to the story of the man beside
the storyteller´s voice crackles in the twilight
painting pictures of places he has been
of sights he has seen
narrated frames of a life he leads
where no one listens

except a man
smoking a cigarette in the night
in a sleeping bag two feet beside
a man who sees the storyteller
eye-to-eye