Five Poems by Kushal Poddar

Strawberry Moon

 

Ten years after they aborted

their first, a girl child,

while passing the pink clinic

they see a silhouette

wearing the strawberry moon

their car radio goes gaga about.

 

The husband throttles the gas,

and the shadow crashes against

the windshield and scatters into

a sparkle of fireflies.

 

The man decides to step out, lean

against the car and smoke while

the woman murmurs the stale nth draft

of her monologue on her husband

as a man and as her husband.

 

In the brief flame of the Zippo

their unborn daughter appears again

as a music box ballerina showing

her pointe technique

on the massy signet ring of the man

who could have been her bad father.

City, 2023

 

Ashes break the gravity's cage.

Albino fireflies pigment the breeze.

Jung has something on this dream,

but the termites have doctored his pages.

 

The local lads too have seen this in sleep;

fly-ash fills up the plots emptied out

after the collapse of the old buildings.

 

They slur, "This is not a dream

but an echo. No amount of hope or

chagrin can kill it." I shake my head,

walk homeward; the wind hustles

the evening smoke; trees beg to the clouds;

on your balcony you emerge wearing nothing;

madness and cigarettes spark in the dark.

Girl With A Plastic Cola Bottle On Her Head

 

"Dad, new Halloween costume, please."

All she said.

"Hold my beer." He homemade one.

The custody battle was short.

Therapy was longer.

 

Bodhi

 

The hired driver, awake,

his head on the steering,

stares at the neon's zen.

 

He waits for the party to end,

and the tired bodies fetch

the stench of the spent glee

onto the backseat.

 

A night bird tilts

the balance of silence.

His static deportment

has just crossed the borderline

of thoughts, worries and dreams.

For one moment he is subatomic,

a figurine of God,

nothing and everything.

 

The Tattoo

 

The friend who told her

that most of the jewellery

will pollute some junkyard

and some will be sold

for the wrong reasons

and her clothes will either be

torn or go out of fashion

took her to the ink shop.

 

Only the tattoo will stay.

She said. It did.

It looks nothing like itself,

can be a line scrivened

on the skin of the earth

by an army of ants praising

the sun's jamboree.

 

Where her hand begins to shake

a star still holds its resemblance

and although the dermis surrounding

has turned into a pool of uncertain

shadows it gives direction if you ask for it.

We don't need it. We know where we all head.

Kushal Poddar - The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe.

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe