Another country crumbles to rubble
and a neighbor approaches as we erect our fence—
not even a neighbor, but the nephew of one,
a long-term visitor with too many cars

and a daughter, a toddler I’ve never seen outside—
introduces himself, as he has been parking
first one car, then two, on the curb just outside
this fence, the one we’ve been building

piece by piece since he moved here.
This place, he says, is so ghetto, this man
whose noisy comings and goings start my days
(or my dog’s) and end them, and have been

for weeks, one car or the other, filled with his things:
some baskets, empty, and various boxes
and other detritus of the itinerant guest.
Sketchy, he says, just a few blocks

that way, and points to his right,
either Europe or New York, or possibly even
Mexico, if he was as confused as I thought him to be.
I was thinking of Kiev, and thanked him for coming

to introduce himself. I never quite got his name.