Outside

by David Chorlton

A cool breeze blows across the intersection
to a man wearing a sleeveless undershirt
beside an empty shopping cart
cutting off his hair
and allowing it to float down past his shoulders
until the tufts remaining
on his scalp are sparse
as the weeds sprouting up
from the gravel where he stands.
He’s home for now

at the edge of a parking lot
that serves the drug store
with its extrovert typography
offering deals he
can’t afford. Outside is his address,

his bedroom and his bathroom,
the lounge where he rests
and the den
in which he settles down
to smoke a cigarette or read
the newspaper someone threw away

but it doesn’t matter if the news
is yesterday’s; nothing is going
to change for him except
the weather forecast, which soon
will turn into a sentence
of life at a hundred degrees
in the shade, and the shade
is private property.