Vlad and I rarely spoke about Putin
We played chess and basketball
We ate Subway at the rec center
Americans are so fat, Vlad says,
because of the sugar, not the fat
They put him on the cleaning crew,
this brilliant cat, marooned, cleaning toilets
Thick eyebrows, English from books, British pronunciation
I declared check, he spelled H-O-R-S
Thin sheets of honey ham, plastic and adipose, and all that sugar
Vladimir, slight homophobe, apolitical
Putin’s bad, he said, but Bush was worse
Sat in the grass and played guitar
The fence was topped with barbed wire
Vlad and Phil, 80 hour weeks to work