“Pho all the way around,”
The leather jacket boy says
While the girls compare nail polish.
The steaming bowls
With plump shrimp swimming
Between the transparent noodles
And beef slices arrive. Then
The click of chopsticks,
The happy slurp from spoons.
Loren Niemi is a storyteller, poet, performer, public policy consultant, and trainer who either has a short attention span or multiple converging interests. He is also author ofThe Book of Plots and coauthor, with Elizabeth Ellis, of Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories. Loren is part of the Saratoga Studio A.M. Sunday Writers, which meets every other Sunday morning in a small studio above a garage in Saint Paul.