Author of the Month: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar

The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

 

Magnoliophyta

I

I cannot remember 

the proper name

of this blossom. 

The plant pulls up 

darkness from its roots.

I kissed no one 

for the first time 

in this glade. Now it's 

false memory 

seeks the ceiling of my mouth.

II

My skin, when I wake up

in the middle of the water,

wears miniscule green

and their pale and invisible 

flowers. They are complete.

They make me a myth.

Night hisses from a poisonberry;

my feet write the story 

of one's emergence 

from his emersion, of returning.

The green glows my shape.

I beg for your toxin. In exchange 

I can give you esse of life now.

***

The Aristocrat House

Beside the taxidermist's dream

of what should be the reaction 

of a tiger to a gawking visitor 

one bare skull of an antelope 

gazes at me with its absent eyes.

I think you want to be the God

of this dead jungle and of the antiques,

furniture, deceased lives' remnants,

albeit they do not worship you.

They share their grief with the maid.

Sometimes they talk to your son

who walks on the parapet when

you do not see it, and whisper in 

hos ears, "Ignite a fire. Purge the rich bricks."

***

My Wife's Ghost Pain

A ghost pain haunts 

my wife's body, and she

splits herself in two.

One bears the suffering 

of a deserted lane, be 

an abandoned building 

in the neighborhood of hazy trees.

The myth is that an old couple 

found death in it, and 

the authority couldn't find their boy.

The other cheers up 

my daughter on a dull morning,

be a bowl of honeyed porridge,

and a yellow bus with a blue streak.

She bids the kid goodbye and still

travels in her. The other shares

the bulletin of the pain with me,

and we seek its origin, argue

over it, light up some sage, burn

down the dwelling with love.

***

---

Setu, September 2025