The cut flowers stink of pizza
when there’s mixed delivery, and the packaging
of the COVID test recalls the garlicky
cucumber salad, like how dreams
and waking can get mixed up together.
I waver, still half-asleep, should I
mention Wolt1 by name in my book, or
just use the brand’s colour to hint at it.
In the end I dream I’m a horse and
they’re burning a double-U into my skin,
but I don’t feel it, just hear the branding-iron
sizzle. I’m galloping. Don’t even notice
I’ve got hooves. By the time I do, we,
the support teams’s darlings, are hurtling
down an empty Andrássy,2 Shetland ponies,
Kisber Felvers3 with beers. On our backs
beans and Neapolitan wafers.
For us, the tenements’ doors stand
open; the city smells of stables,
there’s blue rain dying our manes.
Up on the screen, Krisztina and Jocó,
two freshly christened raindrops, are
lauded for their advertising value.
Only the 6th District residents grumble. They
carry manure up the service stairway: proof.
But then they fling it out of the windows to
spatter on our backs. I wake up,
then fall asleep again. The company pulls out of
our contract on account of a poem. I argue
I couldn’t have written it. It’s true. Horses don’t write.