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