Quarantine Poetry by K. 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),Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers, India) and now Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press)

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Tired Quarantine Letter To The Daughter

For awhile I write nothing, desire
to record a voice that my daughter
may hear year far-flung in a manner
I cannot imagine today.

Then what I may say that makes mistakes
explained, mysteries exhumed, kites flown
over a overbridge whose string might slash truths
speeding beyond my understanding, our comprehension!

Today the rainwater drainage gurgles
midst an arid run of weather. The bed
she sleeps in can be seen through a screen-door
I don’t open, feel no power to push.
The kite in the sky is yellow and green.
Not that this matters, conveys a sign.
I commence recording. When she may listen
it should entomb silence of a falcon flying
at a distance one sees but fails to adhere
to its ague.

A List About My Father

Perchance my knowledge
about my father
has the length of his shorts
especially those he used for
his ever lengthening gym times,
then I smell sweat and think of him;
may be I am not ignorant;
his ebony pipe and sailors cut
tobacco he ceased to smoke when
I, a child, tried to device some good time;
his constant rambling about
my mother’s health and mine;
his notebooks filled with detailed
price of vegetables, meat and fish;
the table he broke with his bare fist
angered over something I must
have done; his typewriter,
the one he used to prepare briefs;
his penchant for sports and my failures;
Old Spice, of course; the tales of his adventures
when he escorted his leftist brother
to another state
snaking between policing and policies;
his flipping through my book of poetry not reading really;
his flipping through the same again not reading again.

Ring

“Don’t let Tim fall in love with you now that I have demised.”,
one clouded morning Tim’s mom tells his wife, “We know, he loves like
an infant.”

Or a black cat
gone to the alley blinded by the government issue fluorescent –
it back makes a devil bridge with its shadow alive in traces of rain.
Because it loves something there blows strong wind,
since the twenty twenty, June, eclipse sun has not been anything
but a ring.

Tim will bring the ornament to renew his vows.
Tim’s wife know what is the best for Tim.

Its You, Black Cat

“Heaven”‘s sprawling the glory of God.” says the convicted preacher.
The watchtower dawns midst the red bricks.
A racoon, dead half in the electric wire, buzzes once more.
To clean one’s bum feels sacred. Holy texts scratched on the wall
tilts a solitary crucifix right beside the pinup girl.
Heaven descends to the laundry room. Mist. Detergent.
Shanked tattooed skunk the guards are yet to clean.
“Searching for my teenage black cat.” Nuthead Tim keeps saying.
“It is not here,”, says the preacher, “but every darkness sings
the glory of the feline.”

Forty Six Words Black Cat

Soggy Edgar Allan Poe makes me sneeze; in the pane, one cloud, dark and pregnant, deflects its spine. My run to retrieve the clothes outside gathers nothing except a fistful of black cat fur in the yard. In another light they might look mythless brown.

Black Cat Method

“Here they skinned the niggah.” “Alive?” “He was my grandpa.” Says Tim. I stare at his achromatic body, alabaster skin, albeit say nothing.
He meets my eyes, unravels his jaws to project the sheath of straw to the ground, “Once on oyr roof I exchanged my skin with a cat so white that autumn mistakes it to be a cloud.”

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