Five Poems by Kushal Poddar

 

'Love, Love Will Tear Us Apart Again'

 

Your aunt knits a half-sweater

for your dog; it wins the season's

conversations and the 'Ugliest'

contest.

 

It is a subtle 'Time for a baby';

it is a folded piece, bookmark

in the grief's journal.

The road, when sun slants,

looks red with the hit and run.

 

Months pass, you groove to

Love, love will tear us apart again

by Joy Division. Your love says,

"We'll move to a place far

from any road if we conceive."

 

In Duotone

 

I watch a social influencer

preaching, "Do not wear

black, the colour of rejection."

 

My father's black won my mother.

She was proud of my light skin,

but then again, she

loved beaches, hated water.

 

My skin is so light that it flies

around in the kitchen sometimes.

My pungent substance makes all cry.

Somedays one cannot embrace rejection.

 

Argentium

 

You part the curtains, and the silver

flakes on the floor remind me of my

mother's faith in silver as a cure

for the evil in one's blood or soul.

She kept a vial of Argentium handy.

She believed in homeopathy as well.

 

"What time is it?"

You answer, "Of memories"

Despite my careful first step I slip

on the shining substance, intangible,

my mother's plasma, unreal,

and I fall into another room,

the one within, and scream for help.

The silhouette of a portly woman

arranging memento mori in a glass vase

does not turn or hear.

 

Inside Out

 

Inch by inch the domiciliary plant

scurries towards the window.

Its leaves know - it is morning now.

 

The room doesn't mind its darkness

until it gawks at the steps,

yards, fence and beyond

through the gape in the wall.

 

I set my mother upright, tell her,

"Imagination is the first act of rebellion.

Loose yourself." It will be a relief.

The room leaps outside

like a flipped, inside out pocket.

Noir Letters of Love

 

We, the noir letters written

in the tongue of love to the daughters

you try so hard to keep intact,

do not desire to hurt them either.

We promise not to be ourselves.

 

For how long?

 

The badness returns, madness.

Desperate to impress we act like a fool

with a pis aller dagger

that kills love out of love,

and we know all along we will go wrong.

 

They say, "Never hurt my daughter."

"I shall kill you." They say.

We shall never, but we do as if to

fulfil a prophecy.

At night near our graves loiters the wind

wearing the leaves bared by the autumn.

Noise whistles all the synonyms of love.

Fireflies bleed a little.

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