Gary's poetry has appeared in various journals—current and defunct—including The Pedestal, Dirty Chai, Burning Word, The Puritan and Maudlin House and more. He is currently assembling a book for publication.


Recent Poems and Performances

It Used to Be Orchards/Fountain Alley
(from “Finding San Jose”)

An excerpt from Cellista’s stage poem “Finding San Jose.” Gary provided the poetry for this haunting segment. Visuals by Jennifer Gigantino and Cellista. Music written and performed by Cellista.


Legacy of Poetry 2020 at SJSU

Gary recently participated in the 2020 Legacy of Poetry event at SJSU with many others, including Sally Ashton and Ellen Bass. You can watch the entire event here:


San Jose Poetry Festival, 2019

Gary’s performance at the 5th Annual San Jose Poetry Festival, September 9, 2019, Martin Luther King., Jr., Main Library, San Jose. Here is a portion of what went down that night. Thanks to Poetry Center San Jose and Robert Pesich for the video. So much fun.


Why There Are Words, Sausalito

Performance at Why There Are Words, Sausalito, California, July 11, 2019. Gary reads the poems, “Auntie Animus,” “The Absurdist Son of an Immigrant Grapples to Understand his Google News Feed,” “Here,” and “In the Gravel at San Abbondio Cemetery.”


Green Tea Ice Cream Stockings, poetry and photos by Gary Singh, animation by Kimy Martinez


 

Analog Reincarnation(Written in response to a series of prints by Indian photographers Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya at the San Jose Museum of Art), originally published in Pedestal Magazine.


 

The Delegates Are ConfusedBurning Word, Issue 92, October, 2019.

Low Season in GradoLowestoft Chronicle, September, 2018.

The Absurdist Son of an Immigrant Grapples With Comprehending His Google News Feed, Burning Word, July, 2018.

Google Knocked Part Two, Maudlin House, March 29, 2017.

Baudelaire Plays Lets Make a Deal in Sam's Coffee ShopDigging Through the Fat, February, 2017.

In the Gravel at San Abbondio CemeteryLowestoft Chronicle, March, 2016.

OffspringMarathon Literary Review, February, 2016.

Google KnockedMaudlin House, December, 2015.

Cafe Cairo, Trinity City HotelDigging Through the Fat, November, 2015.

 

I Ride a Bus to the Suburbs in the Searing Heat

Watch Ryan Alpers perform Gary's poem, "I Ride a Bus to the Suburbs in the Searing Heat," originally published by Scapegoat Review.


"Departure," originally published in The Puritan

Departure

(Tu Fu, the Tang Dynasty Poet of Suburban Wasteland America, Offers
a Farewell Poem to his Friends, Readers and Fans)

concrete expressways
spread their tentacles

cul-de-sacs, wool-coloured stripmalls,
tract-house subdivisions

seasonless weather
suggests the time is right

who wouldn't lament
the end of an industry

obsolete columnist will not
devolve to the dark side of PR

legions of worthy readers
here in the neighbourhood

beautiful readers, you have
held me upright

now I am heading south
to a legitimate darker side

who'd give a dime, or even some tea
to this wandering columnist with a broken MacBook


Junkyard Nissan, originally published in Scapegoat Review

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 owns a karaoke operation
with a fiancé she doesn't like,
she bones up on the lyrics,
making him angry 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.


Racetrack Massacre, originally published in Burning Word

Racetrack Massacre

Look at it this way. They forced you to wear a hair net. Because your locks were too long for the rusted chicken-fried-steak trailer, that grease-pit concession-stand prison uglifying the edge of the racetrack. As if the orangutan with rotted-out teeth on the other side of the counter, the dude standing there with chewing-tobacco drool, slobbering all over himself, drenched in day-old sweat, the dude on his fifth can of Stroh's, hell bent for the grandstand with his skeletal meth-head girlfriend to watch modified cars drive around in a circle for two hours--that dude--like he would give a shit if one single hair from your head wound up in his chicken-fried steak sandwich. Look at it that way. They forced you to wear a hair net. They got what they deserved. They all got what they fucking deserved.

Watch Gary reading Racetrack Massacre at WORKS/San Jose. May 14, 2014


"Here", originally published in Literary Juice and nominated for a Pushcart

Here

Watch Ryan Alpers perform Gary's poem, "Here," at the Blackbird Tavern in San Jose on February 13, 2014, as part of Play On Words' second performance.


More poems published by Gary Singh