Hybrid Poetry, Flash, Art

Kushal Poddar

At Once

Nothing may puzzle you, make you suck your breath, stumble and crawl backward with the pushes of your feet, kickstart your morning than finding a body in your trash. I sank into a sea of fright and felt all of my stomach when I saw my body in the upturned bin.

At once I cursor through my body and flesh. One felt unreal and the other real, and then the feelings interchange. 'Who did it?' was the last question flooded my mind. The first one was - 'Why?'

The wind was a silkworm. I sensed it, couldn't discern it.

The first man arrived was the one who killed me. I didn't know this, but could perceive it. Every details I comprehend were split in those two kinds. He dialled the emergency number in an unhurried manner, and he would be in every candlelight vigils and in the search party for the dog I called Mote, a brown one with furry white served on the side.

Finding Mote in the black wood behind the city came as a surprise as it avoided the shadowy spread whatever happened. Perchance it sensed that a fence was plucked; his friend was removed; a cime was unanswered; grief needed a scary place, uninked by the data the dog wanted to share but knew that no one would comprehend.

At that point I desired someone would adopt it even the killer, and so he did. They had a ginger and wound marriage for a while. Time passed. The year curled the end of the calendar. They were now two bland healed lines intersecting. 

He would drift around. In the forlorn afternoons he would gather Mote from the vicinity of the garbage bin outside my house and watch the birds together sitting on an empty anthill at the door of the wood.

The dog would lick the air where I existed. I too sat beside them. Of course, none answered - 'Why?' The species of the birds were changing. 

In the gold shimmer of the evenings when autumn arrived the killer began to see the extra number of the shadows, and would face nightmares. I would be his flashbacks. I would become his mailbox of pending dues. Yet, I could not recall anything myself. Does a memory remember any detail? Can you life a chair while sitting on it?

I became Mote's November, a tumor grey cell spreading rapidly without fogging it too much. The dog limped those days. 

By the passing time I began to manifest myself, an apparition at first. I would be waiting when he cleans his mirror above the basin. He would shiver, and his rogue razor would want some sacrifice. Blood reminded me something, but not the actual answer. He would shiver and wipe the mirror as if it was his life. 

I would remain there when he was done. I would be him and me at once.

***

While Watching An Old Movie

If we could rescucate the world,

succeed in a complex surgery 

because we've drifted away  

from the way of the wayward 

and because we're the heroes,

subjects of the divine intervention 

would we do it? Would we

succumb to our dead wish?

Would we propose the nature, on 

our knees et al, to protect her

till death do us part? Death too, might

rest and repose in this battered theatre,

doze off while on the screen the hero

reclaims life, dream and unrecognisble 

universe, messy, and himself out of work.

***

Terra Thirty-first

From the terra thirty-first

a friend wishes me a happy new year.

The light of my phone's screen, 

oblong on my face, makes me

a forlorn candlestick in a dark room.

I end the call and make some dinner.

The fork, dropped, scurries away,

hides behind the trunk of some chair 

lost in the bush-carpet.

I think about calling someone and greet,

proceed with the chain, albeit 

I don't desire to raise hope in him.

***

Water Skinny-dives Into Us

Water skinny-dives into us.

Its naked touch sends a message,

a demanding one, to my brain,

and confused, I hold you tight

as if I need to prove my side, loyalty.

A shell draws blood. We offer it

to the phosphorus. The property 

of the glow makes us two shadows.

Why don't we go to the mountains?

You almost ask, albeit because you know

the answer you let silence lead us

to the vendors. Between the conch

and the fried fish I sigh, "Here my mother 

had the cardiac arrest that night."

***

As The Year Ends

My visual field strewn with 

the leaves of the Fall 

embraces an uncertain twitch; 

forever fall, you call these; geese 

sew the cirrus and cumulus; 

feathers fall. A few chickens,

girls playing hopscotch and 

daydreams farm this field, 

forever fall, you call these, and

I call my friend, a monk. 

He says that it is okay to feel 

the physical side of the maya.

Why does sadness kiss me?

Why I and my Illusion, you, sit

on a broken fence and watch

our dissolution for hours? There

must be some civilization 

where this marks the year's beginning.

***

---

Setu, January 2025