Category: Kushal Poddar

3 poems by Kushal Poddar in memory of fallen friends through the Pandemic

grayscale photo of person riding on boat on sea

The Art of Escape

The smoke and mirrors, spare cloak
in the hanger, every room – you say,
a green room because we have been
preparing for a grand show no one will see –
and every empty chair observe silence,
and if you step outside, the standee displays
‘Magician is dead; long live the magic!’
in front of the city hall. The tips of the trees
celebrate some pyromaniac’s wet dream.
Do they bet on the fate of an escape artist?
Rain pasees the panes. The sidewalks turn green.
Waiting plays a trick, and I let it think that
it picks up the wrong card.

The Vanishing Act, Magician

(In memory of the magician Uday Shankar Saha)

The white mice from his handkerchief
shiver with the freedom, as if
they remember being nonexistent.

The flash, smoke and mirrors,
sorcerer obliterated,
the stage waits for the trick,
and we think we know the punchlines
beforehand. One little father
holds the hand of his big son,
ready to leave the proceedings.

The son looks at one mice near his feet.
The faint noise is a sight now. A sleight of fate,
a magic rolls on, the magician, gone, exists
as the stage, audience waiting and leaving,
boxes and handkerchiefs, saw and mice.

Thirteen Cuts

I close the door, say, “Enjoy.”
to the killer returned to the x;
downstairs, I descend,
a housekeeper of death.
Downstairs, it rains, or so I hear;
the killer lies where his last victim fell.
In the jail of his socks his toes wiggle.
In my empty room, I pick up the phone,
but dial all the wrong ones.
The dead girl stands near my window,
“Uncle, I am behind my rents, I know.”
She says. I nod. The killer knocks on
the door.

Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Kushal Poddar

2 poems about the Pandemic in India by Kushal Poddar

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Kushal-Poddar/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AKushal+Poddar

https://icefloepress.net/postmarked-quarantine-a-book-of-poems-by-kushal-poddar/

2 poems about the Pandemic in India by Kushal Poddar

Dove, Roof, Sunrise, Shadow, Nature
Unuttered

A dove through the window
dares the elongating shadow
of the bed. No one lies on it.
I weep. You gave me one calendar
where dates were tear-drop shaped.
They all fall until I ambulate through 
the December of my ethos.
I shut the window and draw the curtains;
this obliterates the dove. The Psalm 23:4 is open.
This anger in my forehead is born from some fear,
I hear you say and wonder if your voice
has always been like this, a lingering finish
of tanin on the back of my language's end. 
A little brittle. A bit thin. The rest of my tongue spreads
an empty billet. Summer trills in sync sound outside.
Time is one jump cut ahead of eclipse of rays.

Out of Body Experience For The Neon Signs

The doors of the man living nextdoor
have transparent bodies and they let me see -
he fumbles for the smoke sticks 
kept in box above the armoire hushed since 
he has been quitting all his bad habits,
and he steps into the faux garden stranded in 
some matching potholes. Night wind stirs their leaves.
The man pretends to smoke and inhale.
Welcome to the city, a neon sign somewhere
blinks a few blind eyes as if those can see themselves.

Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Kushal Poddar

https://icefloepress.net/postmarked-quarantine-a-book-of-poems-by-kushal-poddar/

4 poems by Kushal Poddar : “Kosher Meat” “Metallic Sea” “Full Moon, Springtime 2021″”Crimson Comes the Gloaming”

Kosher Meat

Today, Tim's birthday, and he slips
down slope of the slippery sanity.
Each word indicates,
he is yet to claw through his sleep

fearing he may see the father he despised
in the antique looking glass near his bed's feet.

An alarm set guts time.
All kosher, salt and pepper sun
burns his skin.

Tim's chickens hatch some one-winged birds.
Feathers choke the wind.
Happy Birthday, he croons while bleeding
one old cock. It quivers as if its body is
the old telegraph lines and death is tapping and SOS.

Metallic Sea
Because that first puff in the morning
still tastes like the Sea-and-metal/
- Rick C. Christensen

I stroll down beach, and my toes
poke through their sandal-shells,
and with their dull and broad nails
I dig up sand's settlement of memory;
It bores me after a jiffy, and I near
the brine light of the morning;
light never belongs to its origine.
Mist sheds the sun, and yet
luminosity sways, wades, stands still
when you close your eyes and imagine
it as a painting - proud and shy with its nakedness.
As if sea has released the light.
Sometimes I walk into the sea
to see if I do not belong to this earthliness,
as if by perishing my flesh I can prove
imperishability, and sometimes, like today,
I see the repetition unworthy. So I drink
the nearest kiosk and gossip
about the ocean level leveling down
the tiny town once made for the tourists.
No one can recall reason for its birth.
You too cannot remember yours, can you?

Full Moon, Springtime 2021
The reflection of the moon at its peak
looks like a before & after photography,
not a pair of fake shots used for selling something,
but one real you stumble upon in a Spring cleaning.

The water seems more smoke and less mirror
one moment, and more mirror and less smoke the next.
Anyways, you would have thought the scene fake,
and yet loved to show the same to your best friend.
You cannot do so in the virus outbreak,
but that doesn't explain why you do not call him,
why sometimes coming out and staring at the lake
is the only thing you do other than washing hands.

Crimson Comes the Gloaming
This means the nightmares
are 3D printed outside,
and my id

empty, the way, if you remember,
our local pub looks like
during the plague quarantine,

waits for angels to seek refuge in the serene hell.

Note to self, stuck on the door
of our whining and rasping refrigerator:

"Don't forget not to wake up!"

See Kushal's bio below:
Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Kushal Poddar

Poetry Showcase from Kushal Poddar

Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Kushal Poddar

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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’. His works have been translated in ten languages. Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
AuthorFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Left for Nothingness: Poem by Kushal Poddar

Statics cackle. An orchestra of insects
plays a leathery elytra music,
and the riverboat leaves the jetty
as the city becomes another kind of insect,
the one whose belly bags the soft fire in protest
against the darkness of the late springtime.
Leaving? Where to? I hold a paper ticket
to ticking oblivion. The insects dissect silence
and murmuring of the commuters alike, and then
there hum the machine, water, shadows.
The other Bank is nowhere to be seen.

Wolfpack Contributor Bio: Kushal Poddar

photo by Dylan Nolte