Four Wonderful Poems by Kushal Poddar

Politics

 

The cat, a true one because

Only its eyes’ filaments

Can be seen in this darkness,

Replaces the dog on the wall

 

The last barking stirs the air

Mewls mix with it for awhile,

And then only the mewls exist.

All day these two beasts

Have been fighting over the garbage.

 

Let’s not talk about politics.

Not tonight. Somewhere

Rain falls on its feet.

 

 

The Slow Dog

 

One slow dog strolls

On the low fence.

A tree almost one with

The November night

Spills half and half

On both the sides of this world.

 

The wall stands as it is,

Albeit everything else man made

Has been mended.

One slow dog leaps

Into the parallel history.

 

I stare through my pane.

That’s all to this story.

 

 

Hunger

 

My grandmother’s how to cook hunger

Is safe in some government locker.

 

She used to begin with kneading the air.

Rest I cannot remember.

 

The great great grand kitten of her last pet

Mewls hollowness in her withered kitchen garden.

 

I open the window, take a spoonful,

Listen to the ting of the spoon hitting

The base of the bowl.

 

 

Calendar

 

Somewhere, the last year

Still holds on to the hinges,

And one drunken overcoat

Misses the hook on the wall,

And its fall sounds soft –

One last leaf leaving the calendar.

 

The barren square inches

Of holographic past haunts

Near the midnight.

Some clock slurs a tick and a tock.

You already mislaid the new calendar.

My call from the morning sphere

Hits a echoing blind alley.

An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine - ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight volumes including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, 'A Place For Your Ghost Animals', 'Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems' and 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated in eleven languages.

Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet