Voices Within: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar is an author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine - ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight volumes including ‘The Circus Came to My Island’, 'A Place for Your Ghost Animals', 'Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems' and 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated in eleven languages. Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet

Lore From the Pandemic

Grief called me yesterday.

I tell her, I had volunteered

for sadness already.

This number is unlisted

from telemarketing.

Grief calls me today.

I hold the phone balanced 

between my earlobe and

shoulder blade, 

my baby daughter in my arms,

my mind chanting

the sacred sentence of love

as if its words are the pills

for her fever. In the TV

the latest numbers of the victims

pop up. I have already told you,

Grief, I have brought my set 

of sadness. I shall report 

and block your calls. 

I shake my head, know 

she will call from other digits.

Again. Again.

***

Lore From the Pandemic- II

One man clads in dust of the cottons 

and holding his head in one piece

with a red-sun headband

drags a chopped thin tree 

by an ever-fraying rope.

Two branches left on the corpse

raise their ends and sway and swing

two or three inches above the tar and turf. 

The man and the tree are one presently.

It scurry; its two stings look venomous;

they wage a war against any onlooker.

White oleanders whisper about the season.

The fragrant snow-petals obliterate

the lane's imperfections.

The creature hisses, breathes, almost

disintegrates into a man and one tree.

I see the glimpse of something known,

and then it becomes a myth once more.

***

Dhobi, The Laundry Man

The man who gathers dirty laundry

door to door, and returns those

in neat rectangles of pressed sun

disappears during the pandemic.

His last week's due remains unpaid

between the pages of my logbook.

Their numbers smell of citrus, grass, 

cycles running along the patches of green.

His phone - the network says - is outside.

Of human reach? 

Sometimes I dwell on the wrinkles

of sadness I wear.

On most of the days I run my hands

to appease the creases in my feelings.

***

---

Setu, February 2022