Boris hates me—
the way he vacuums at 3am,
the way he thunders floor
and hammers above my head,
this my brain turns over
on the afternoon train,
and it is false to say
I am innocent it wasn’t me,
the music was loud all day.

On the day these gods first met,
Lord Shiva fought his newfound son—
two adding violence enough
to part the locks of a jungle.
The boy was defeated, his head lost
in the bargain, and Shiva’s shakti
restored him with the guise
of a wise, old, lumbering elephant
on the child’s body.  And at

six foot ten Boris was a Bosnian man
never spoke words until he’d lived here
one year and said,
“What is the easiest way to Starbucks?”
We thought he was a mute.
Thus, he lunged off, swinging his arms
across the traffic in the rain
like a short-eared South Asian mammoth,
clearing a path through the trucks, determined.