John Nandy
Ayr Beach
Sitting rotting baby teeth on a stick of Ayr’s rock.
Sweet splinters of mint flavoured glass.
A sick stomach and sticky, sweating hands.
I hate rock but I ate tons
spilling shattered pillars in the sand.
At Ayr beach other kids waded naked
into the shallow, rain coloured sea.
Goose-pimpled people scooped into swim-suits
sprawled in the sun like selfish jelly-fish.
Pet dogs panted and fetched perpetually.
An albino soul I sulked in my mother’s shade
pug-faced like Churchill, jaws latched on misery,
my father scolding me like youth’s accountant.
At my feet pigeons scrapped with gulls over litter.
Gulls cackled with Punch and Judy voices.
I feared their piranha frenzy, devouring the day
with smiles, building castles, kicking beach-balls.
Their joy. Too deep and too furious to enter.
A shy boy I clung to the unsinkable tarmac shore
and the brighter window of my dreams.
Page(s) 154
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