Four Poems by Kushal Poddar

 

Cardinal Sins

One cardinal cheeps
near your sinful pane,
open in summer wind,

near your bedpost failing
to disentangle the white shirt
of the other man. You wear
the black boxers, not yours.

One sweeping finger can shift
a paradigm, alter a filter
the way they used to see differently
with a new pair of contact lenses.
Not that anything changes.
Cardinal song, the sudden provocation
of a new leaf, Bible in the bedside drawers,
cigarette kills, and strangers may.

So Cool So Metal

I opened your gun-safe
this evening.

I know you kept those bullets
for a ticking stimulus,
for a sudden provocation,

but our neighbour
played that wedding song again
and again and again.

Ghostlight

 

I murmur in my wife’s ears,

“Taylor and Brown gave us Positive Illusions.

That was nineteen eighty-eight.

Deceive our hearts. Use it, dear. Keep us lucid.”

 

And still, the ghost casts

a peripatetic disk of light as if the sun has

caught some dome shaped crystal

of the wristwatch belonging to one deceased.

 

Our daughter chases the light.

“Take her for a mosey.” Says my wife.

 

The street has emptied its truths to no end.

The crows settle for a dozen murders

on the railings of the pavements.

We walk, and still, the ghostlight strolls by our side.

“Tomorrow is better than the past.”

I tell our daughter. The light shines like slant laughter.

"I changed my career."

Goodbye, Cold Pies

The night is drawn toward the pallor of the dawn.
Drowning is not unforeseen.
The bird that tweets welcome is the one that bids goodbye.
What do I know? The poet lives moored in our basement.
Our daughter may never go to a physical school,
and yet we fill a box of tiffin for her with our thinning
resources and pack a bag with books and notebooks and pencils.
She may never use a pencil, still, we sharpen their weapon-heads
as if our muscles follow a covert mission the agency has forgotten.
What do I know? The poet lives in the basement and refuses to
write what hurts him most.

 

An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine - ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, 'A Place For Your Ghost Animals', 'Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems' and 'Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel'.
Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet

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