Voices Within: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’ (Spare Change Press, Ohio), “A Place For Your Ghost Animals” (Ripple Effect Publishing, Colorado Springs), “Understanding The Neighborhood” (BRP, Australia), “Scratches Within” (Barbara Maat, Florida), “Kleptomaniac's Book of Unoriginal Poems” (BRP, Australia) and “Eternity RestorationProject, New And Selected Poems” (Hawakal Publishers, India). 

Tulips Are Not In The Vase

And this-
the space searching for something 
to contain, manifest, fill it 
from corner to corner and yet 
keep it empty, leave it yarning 
for this- 
a space searching for something 
to contain, manifest- 
I try to forget watching a feline, 
asleep and awake 
on the cornice for my neighbor 
who forgets to open its window 
every morning since his death.

The Reader

The books yell back, "I do not belong to you!"
He corrects them, "We."
"We speak in singular." They say.


He picks up a chequered cotton duster to buff
his wife. The grey cat on the top shelf stretches itself 
beyond the yard, lane, road, highway, 
those log bearing trucks smoking towards the storehouses 
where the drivers will get laid.


Everything speaks in singular.
He stares at the War And Peace dressed as 
his wife in a turbulent gown.

Vacationing 

"I cannot hear you!" I whoop.
Excitement turns me into
a deaf and stuttering priest
mumbling God's name wrong-
"Sea!",

and the waves wing white into
the azure, chase each other
in the trail of the fish rising, receding
within the sea.

"I cannot hear you either!" You mumble.
We both hear these. These wrong prayers
to be lost fading into the sea.

Along the coast a beach ball shadows us
for a while and stop, watch us 
becoming the mumblings in the deaf's ears.

Panic Attacks

Two pigeons and a cat
on the mantle of the house
piece together oblivion.

The day is also cloudy,
judgmental too.

A thought- the cat may 
have a motive behind its sleep-
throbs in me, makes me sit on the edge, 
my hand quivering 
the abrupt onset of emotion 
I suffer often since you called 
and wished me a very happy forty. 

Once you specify the age 
you cannot say- Many happy returns. 

The day is cloudy, 
a pigeon of no return.
Voices Within - Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019

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