Poem: Recycled Shrine

There is a shrine in my house that was built
for the Virgin Mary, to house
the immaculate mother’s effigy and to honor
all in God which is feminine. But near completion
the builder’s own mother died
and it became a shrine to her instead.
When my roommates and I moved in
we did not know what to do with such a space
and hung a yellowed portrait of John Wayne
stoic and squinting in his many guises,
and now I wonder just who will have to die
to find a place there instead.