SKETCHES
Ashok Niyogi
Three old women
Sat basking in the sun
On a bench
In the snow working silent
At their needlepoint.
All three had sleeping cats
On their laps
Purring gently away.
On a week day afternoon,
The park was isolated
The incessant monotone of the purring
Grew louder and louder
Till their eardrums would burst.
The three women looked at each other once,
And gouged out the cats’ eyes,
And let the blood flow
On to their skirts,
Down their stockings,
Into their winter boots.
They continued with their needlework;
The cats were pets.
********************************
A bunch of boys of nine or ten
Behind the school chapel
Were catching dragonflies,
They would sneak upon them,
Catch them by the wing
And tear their wings off
To watch the torsos wriggle.
On chapel stairs
The dragonflies just would not die.
***********************************
The alcoholic middle-aged divorcee
In the flat below,
With a thin emaciated child in the bedroom,
The child snivels and snivels,
The woman lights a cigarette,
Picks up her walking stick,
And taps herself into the bedroom.
She stubs her cigarette on the child’s buttocks;
The child shrieks
**************************
The mangy old bitch with sagging tits
Had sores all over,
Lay in a ditch,
Eyes doleful in hunger,
Yellow teeth bared in self-defense.
Some street children had tied
A string of firecrackers to her tail,
Someone lit the firecrackers,
The bitch yelped and jumped
And danced in fear
As the neighbors watched.
******************************
The beggar boy at the traffic light,
Washcloth in hand was swiping at windshields.
The temperature outside was over 130,
A Lady delicately blew her nose,
Rolled down the car window
To a blast of heat,
Flicked away the soiled tissue,
And quickly rolled back the window
To keep the air-conditioning in.
The tissue fell at the beggar boy’s feet.
**********************************
From inside the glass-walled pizzeria
They stared at the newspaper boys
Crouched against the driving snow,
Mittens with blue fingers sticking out.
Nobody was buying newspapers
Because it was too cold.
************************************
Suburban America, come away
From your baseball parks
And walk barefoot with me
On shards of salt in Badwater Lake,
Peel away this insulation of lawns and kitchen gardens
And garage sales and loans and mortgages,
Come sketch with me in black and white.
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