Ivor comes in the bar
with 7 and a half turkey sandwiches.
“You want a half?” he asks me.
“I know where you got’em” I say.
It’s Christmas and an army
of Christian youth
are marching through the slum
handing out food.
Outside I smoke and watch
as a group breaks off
to pray with a homeless woman,
a wreath of blonde hair
punctuated by a single
brown chestnut.
Jon Bennett is a Pushcart Award nominated writer and musician living in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. His novel, The Unfat, is available through his website, http://www.jonbennett.info, and his music can be found on Pandora and Spotify.
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