Gary Singh

JUNKYARD NISSAN

they were laughing in the poetry seminar
when I distributed my desolation
yesterday evening;

now as I sit home,
she comes by for tea, invites herself over,
along with a baby
who claws at the books on my floor;

he will be just like me;

But I'm thinking of another one--
she runs a karaoke operation
with a fiancé she doesn't like,
she bones up on the lyrics,
making him nervous
every time she texts me;

and another--
she works in retail to support
her boyfriend's coke habit
because he was the first one
to teach her the properties
of French cheese;

pieces of me have been parted out
like a junkyard Nissan
to each one of them
but as I get older
my chassis begins to miss
the parts;

these days only the chassis is left,
leaving me completely stripped;

the books, though, they remain on the floor,
but my teapot is now empty,
so she departs with the baby
and that exquisiteness in tow;

come next week, in the seminar,
notebook paper and laptop screens
will occupy desks yet again,
with pens and curled fingers
redistributing the parts.



Gary Singh is an award-winning travel journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he's published hundreds of works including newspaper columns, travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. Operating between established realms—creatively, geographically or even psychically—Gary is a sucker for anything that fogs the opposites of native and exotic, luxury and the gutter, academe and the street.