Domestic Reliquary
There is a wicker basket in the kitchen
on a shelf under the coffee maker
that holds a wild mix of wayward things,
a crazy collection of unrelated items
that bear no connection one-to-another:
orange markers and pink fountain pens,
that may or may not work,
a grocery receipt from months ago
a small container of cannabis gummies,
pineapple or apricot flavored,
10 or 20 milligrams— I can’t remember which,
in a peaceable kingdom where a doorbell button
sleeps next to a yellow keyring
and colored pencils lay down
with No. 2 graphite ones,
in a shrine for everything lost, odd and worthless,
a sundry mix of the misplaced
which seem to wiggle, roll and slide,
to make their way to this final place—
all the little parts of us.
My Ex
Some women
remind me of cities,
and like cities each has
a unique character and spirit.
I am thinking specifically
of my ex now.
She is no Paris,
Berlin or Barcelona,
but rather, a Soviet-bloc
brutalist landscape,
dark and unwelcoming
as Prague in a late
afternoon thunderstorm,
or more accurately,
she is monolithic
like the blackened
concrete block buildings
you see lining
the narrow streets
of the Hungarian Capital.
Yes, my ex is Budapest.