Ingrid stares
at the sea
the wild waves
the seagulls

we've come down
on the coach
from London
organised
by the church
of gospel
worshippers

what are those?
she asks me

they're seagulls

do they bite?

I don't know
want ice cream?

her brown eyes
gaze at me

no money
she tells me

I’ve got some
I tell her

is there lunch?
she asks me

I think so
there's money
from the church
for us kids
from poor homes
I tell her

her brown hair
is pinned back
by steel grips

she smiles wide
her rather
mild buckteeth
beam at me

fish and chips?
she asks me

I guess so

can I be
your girl friend
for the day?

want ice cream?

O yes please
she utters

I go get
2 ice creams
from a van
parked near by

what you want?
the guy asks

2 ice creams
with choc flakes

I watch him
fill 2 cones
with ice cream
then plonk in
2 choc flakes

I walk back
to Ingrid
here you are
I tell her

she takes one
and we walk
on the beach
in the sand
8 year olds
hand in hand.

Summer recess had come
and she sat with you
out in the field
over looking her house

and the railway
was not far off
where the occasional train
puffed by sending

a sprouting of white smoke
as it went by
and she looked at it passing
and spoke of after school days

when she would begin
her adult life and settle down
and have children
but you were thinking

of a train trip with your parents
years before
to some seaside place
and you watched

the scenery go by
and the steam go by
the window
and the smell

and the sight excited you
and stuck itself
inside your head
and Judith said

what do you think?
and you said
about what?
and she said

about children's names?
what names
would you choose?
your brain struggled

to the surface
and whirled through
a list of names
that came to mind

boy or girl?
you asked
she sighed
either

haven't you been
listening to me?
sorry got distracted
by the train smoke

had a Proustian moment
you said
a what?
she said

a Proustian moment
you replied
what the heck is that?
she said

pulling her skirt
over her knees
where it had risen up
as she moved  

Marcel Proust wrote
that eating a certain cake
took him back
to a certain moment

of his life
but you
haven't been eating cake
Judith said

her hand rested
on her knees
her eyes focusing on you
no it's just an example

you said
about how things
can remind you
of other things

or places or times
do you recall
the first time we kissed?
she asked

yes
you said
of course I do
it was near Christmas

and we were carol singing
and it was dark
and the moon was out
and the stars were bright

and your lips pressed
onto mine
ok ok
she said laughing

at least you remember
and as she moved forward
the buttons
of her white blouse

parted briefly
to reveal a hint
of fleshy *******
so what names

do you like?
she asked
none come to mind
you said

she shook her head
what about Rachel or David?
she said
fine

you said
nice religious names
although David
brings to mind

a kid with a catapult
and a girl I once knew
with buckteeth who smelt
of old socks

she looked skywards
and sighed
and lay back
on to the grass

and you lay beside her
both of you  
gazing up
at the expanse

of blue and white
her hand reaching out
for yours
in that one moment

of life
in the great
out of doors.

Another four legs and a tail fall prey.
The pink tablets are too believable.

The family does not contemplate.
They only eat and eat and eat: disemboweling.

They run along the white
Tubes, filled with grey straws

That spawns red, yellow and black.
But do not drink from them.

Their ears rise up like antennas
Picking up signals they worry to decipher.

They only run and run and run.
Hear those patters. Hear them chasing death down the stairs.

Their buckteeth carves through the pills,
Lulling them into dehydration. Death craves for thirst.

And when their stench bleeds itself across the room,
It ferments electronics and shuts noses.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

I slide the silver painted six shooter
into the holster on my right hand side.
I stand there arm arched, hand ready
to go for the gun. I push my cowboy

hat back away from my cool forehead.
The bad guys are circling me. Today
I’m Wyatt Earp, the day before I was
Bill Hickok, shot in the back while

playing cards with some blonde ******.  
One of the bad guys goes for his gun,
I go for my gun before his is out of
his holster, I’ve got him between the

eyes, then the other before he can say:
What the heck, then the other before
his gun reaches to his eye. I blow along
the barrel as they do in films, put it

back in my holster. My mother irons
clothes in the other room. My sister
plays with dolls, in the long hallway.
None heard the gunshots inside my head;

all bad guys are dead.   I light up a
thin sweet cigarette and light it on an
imaginary match struck on the wall.  
Half hour later I see Ingrid on the

balcony. She talks of going to the
park to go on the swings and slide.
She has her brown hair held in place
with hair clips, mild buckteeth, brown

gravy eyes gaze at me. What you been
doing? she asks. Cleaning up the West.
West what? She says. Wild West, I reply.
She nods, uncertain, uninterested. Shot

three baddies. Bang, bang, bang. I push
back my thumb and point *******.
I am Wyatt Earp today. You were Bill
Hickok yesterday, she says, looking at

my ******* aiming at her narrow chest.
What happened to Hickok? She asks.
He 's dead. Oh, she mouths.  I put my
fingers away in my trouser pocket. Swings?

She says. I guess. So we walk off together
down the stairs, she wearing a red flowery
dress, white ankle socks, black plimsolls.
I look down the stairs well for any bad guys

lurking, gun ready in my trouser pocket,
Bowie knife in the belt around my waist.
She talks of a new skipping rope her mother
has bought her, I see no one lurking, no baddies

waiting with guns out. We walk through the
Square, out in the open, my ******* posed
for action, my Bowie knife ready to throw,
off we walk towards the park we slowly go.

you like a girl with teeth too big to fit into her mouth
(i'm glad i grew out of my buckteeth)

I would say that I don't care what I wear but, I would be lying.
I would say that I don't care for my hair but, I would be lying.
I would say I don't care what people think about me but, I would be lying.
I would say your words don't hurt me but, I would be lying.
I would say that I have no feelings but, I would be lying.
I would say that I don't care about my broken glasses but, I would be lying. I would say I don't care about my buckteeth that stick out but, I would be lying. I would say that I'm not a lier  but, I would be lying.

I saw you ugly in a costume
You wore for Halloween.
You had decaying buckteeth on
And the ugliest hair I've ever seen.

I recognized you right away
Though your face I could not see:
Maybe it was how you walked
Or the way you spoke to me.

We went along, you took the teeth out,
To show me they weren't real;
When I asked you if I could,
You offered your hair to feel.

It was oily and matted and looked like bugs
Were living somewhere within;
You laughed and asked if I noticed
The paperclip used for a pin.

We kept on walking, side by side,
I liked you, ugly or not:
Its what's beneath that matters,
And that shines through, I thought.

Beneath the surface I saw beauty
Out on an ugly lark
And me becoming more and more eager
To be with her in the dark.

valentines is today? odd, i don't feel anything. sylvester's is more depressing anyhow, that catholic name for new year's eve gets me, rough; now for a boxing match; the first kiss went to the bone, we clipped our buckteeth going beyond the lips: clumsy kissing paved the way to quote her, on our first date, buying an edward hopper book in which she wrote: dearest mateusz (mateush in english), thanks for a wonderful day in london! i doubt you'll end up like any of the people in hoppy's paintings. your to good looking, lots of love, a promise with the dot above the i signed with a morphing into a heart.*

these days i laugh for two people,
i'm happy for two people,
my diabolical laugh
like a magpie's cackle call
resounds with searching depths,
and such contentment is only
reserved for the few
who rather show a singularity,
a monohumanism, akin to monotheism,
of a man isolated from his peers,
who sometimes plays a broken
guitar to raise the dead, and subsequently
haunt the living, with him alive,
but the living not allowed entry,
merely a distance of shutting up
in a nestling hope of counters
of providing more, not akin to
mozart and the others in the + (plus)
category, but in the x (multiple) category...
of seeing in near proximity a thousand
dramas of themselves in grown sperms
outside the ova: innocently they craft
the tale of the bees and the birds thereafter.

preternaturally longish grey hair,
acid-yellow buckteeth hanging from the
slathered lipstick of your thin upper lip.
(a wigged version of Billy Corgan).
fixed into a moronically concentrated pucker,
failing at the illusion of fullness.
while garnishing an apartment with the
paraphernalia of a free spirit too stale to beat
to death, a just-so of obsessively repeated
finishing touches.
the remanent rise of ******-***** coziness,
niche/nook/now--you, no...wind doesn't like you.
the very thought of your current routine is as
flotsam as the passion-**** you once dealt.