Repair & Maintenance
by Preeti Vangani

1. My father euphemizes going to poop as Vacation, an average trip
2. inside is thirty-five minutes like a nice spa for my body
3. he says unless his phone rings inside & it is an aunt’s son’s
4. friend’s uncle’s cousin enquiring about the what, why, how
5. what now, where of a certain cancer & through the bathroom door
6. like his favorite song I can hear him croon names of hospitals
7. rehearsed, doctors memorized by first names & specializations &
8. a chorus of cures as if treating cancer is his long-forgotten hobby

1. Come stay with us, we’ll fix together he says; this body trapped
2. in your mouth, chest, lung, stomach, colon. Then pauses & paces
3. in a prison of his own inadequacies trying to make redemptions
4. for what he lost, as if a stranger’s life lengthened is my mother
5. being reincarnated, as if becoming a bed & breakfast for cancer
6. is him injecting grief with a dose of morphine, as if hosting demons
7. that took Mumma away is my father testing his voice like a tourist
8. at the edge of an echo point whispering I tried I tried I tried