A Box of 7-11 Pizza

A homeless man dressed like Vanilla Ice in his heyday stands outside my house holding a box of 7-11 pizza on a windy weekday afternoon, waiting for his girlfriend who lives next door with her wizard grandparents, pizza for a lunch date in his tent pitched in the woods a half mile from my house. I say wizard because the grandparents are wizards and host their own wizard show on YouTube. The granddaughter, an ex junkie, wrecked her car not long ago, drunk, DUI, got a job cleaning elderly incontinence in a care home, got fired three days later, so her grandmother told me across a fence the other day as we weeded wild onions. They wanted to kick the granddaughter out but she had nowhere else to go except the tent, even though her mother lived in town.

Vanilla fondles his Bowie knife sheathed in a scabbard somehow strapped to his baggy Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls shorts. I frequently detest him because he litters my front yard with cigarette butts, Doritos bags and Monster cans while waiting for his girlfriend. Worse, he often plays air guitar. Even worse, his presence displaces crows, finches, blackbirds and morning doves roosting in a majestic cedar tree and the occasional deer. Anyone who takes birds and deer away from me deserves my poetic detestation. Vanilla stands at the curb, carrying the pizza box with one hand like Walter Payton carried a football when he broke into the open field. Who holds a pizza box like that? The girlfriend emerges wearing a tight purple and black outfit. An argument immediately ensues. FUCK YOU! yells Vanilla nonstop to the girlfriend who screams FUCK YOU right back while I’m rocking in my recliner in the living room, staring out the window, trying to read a Jim Harrison novella, wishing Jim had written a novella about this couple, but he’s dead, as is Raymond Carver, who might have penned something placid about them in a short story with his signature detached style. Yes, Ray writing a story about a half homeless couple ripping apart a 7-11 pizza box (pizza still inside) during an argument that had nothing to with pizza in front of my house. A lot better than the streaming shows I bootleg and never finish.

The crows loved the pizza squished on the street. They fly so well with slices of pepperoni in their beaks.