Components

By PS Cottier

The spare parts man plies his trade
every night, drives his wooden cart
through the purpose-built alleys
behind the houses. Drives is an exaggeration,
for his old horse knows the way through repetition,
the choreography of clip-clop laid in her head
takes them surely through to dawn.
In the cart he stores whatever has been left
for him to take away. A litre of despair, 
dripped into a cheap plastic bucket,
or an inch of temper, stored in a locket.

Number seventeen has left out
a dog collar, with a shiny tag that reads Ben,
the word placed above a stylised pawprint.
He places it in the cart, although lost dogs
are not his forte. If the whole process 
is in any sense his, he reminds himself. 
A small bell on the collar tinkles brightly.
The litre of despair groans at sudden merriness
breaking out like a rush of pink-blush measles,
disturbing its preferred shade of gloom, even
forming a thin skin of joy on the surface of its murk.

Blood stains on underwear, at the house
that can’t conceive. A book from the house
where the youngest son just can’t seem to read.
The box of fingernail clippings takes a minute
to decipher — Look how long since he left,
measured in my nails’ remorseless growth.
She is not a tree, he thinks, with each ring
marking a full year, but these tiny semi-circles
must add up to a far while, for any mortal.
A decade, measured in clipped keratin,
takes up just a little space in the cart’s bed.

Number fifty-three has left wine bottles,
often a cry for someone’s sobriety.
Once a couple left out a wooden kidney,
beautifully rendered and painted,
desire transplanted into a tiny sculpture.
He can’t remember if the charm’s plea
was answered or not, for that was sixty years
or so ago. Their needs all merge after a while.
He picks up a bunch of keys outside number three.
Whether they are for a house foreclosed,
or a country from which the person is in exile,
he isn’t sure. He places them carefully, so as
not to annoy that fussy litre of despair.

Home Klopp, he says, unnecessarily,
for the horse has already turned that way,
retracing the route she has followed
several thousand times. His pipe is lit
just as the sun starts to edit the dark.
He unloads the night’s tokens in the shed
far larger than his cottage, feeds Klopp,
eats breakfast, then performs his final task.
He places all the spare parts collected
into a large bath and stirs with the paddle.

One wish will be granted, but it is not his business
to say which, or even how the procedure happens.
It does though, he knows, all too well.
Did he not once leave out a test-tube,
and was his desire to perform experiments
not granted? True, most scientists know more
about what is going on than he does,
can articulate findings in peer-reviewed papers.
He can just stir components, sometimes catching
a vision of a creature formed from all the parts
tipped into the bath. Not something he really
wants to see. Best to look away. He waits an hour,
then disposes of the leavings in the ordinary trash.

The next night, he harnesses the cart again.
The pickings will be outside different back gates,
but the crop is always replenished —
sure as bulbs in spring, but smelling of longing,
or acrid with a stench of probably irretrievable loss. 
A tiny glove. 
A broken chair, stinking with anger.
A pair of earbuds. (Would be musician? Another lost lover? Request for a better pair?)
A cotton mask. 
A single sock, toe-worn.
A lock of hair. (He must have carted ten thousand.)
Twelve painted snail shells. (He has no idea, his head shell-empty.)

Passing number seventeen, Klopp shakes her mane,
and he hears a dog barking. A smile, the first
in perhaps fifty years, lights up his grey face.
Shut up Ben! he shouts, and laughs, just as Klopp
slows, and turns her way towards hay and rest.

About the Author

 P.S. Cottier is a poet who lives in Canberra, with a particular interest in speculative poetry.

She has been published widely at home and in Canada, England, New Zealand and the USA.

Two of her horror poems were finalists in the Australian Shadows Awards for 2020. Her latest books are V8, co-wriiten with Sandra Renew, (Ginninderra Press) which looks at cars and other vehicles, and Tuesday’s Child is Full (In Case of Emergency Press) which is made up of poems first published at her blog. (These two collections are non-genre.) 

P.S. Cottier is currently the Poetry Editor at The Canberra Times and blogs at <https://pscottier.com>