WORK
A soft hum surges my father
back to our home. One window
throwing some light on the path.
The parrot toots like a foghorn.
I know my father knows that
we know- he no longer has
any work, and he loves the fuss,
facade, fucked up formalities
feigned for a man who pretends
to return from his day job.
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THIS BLOOD OF FRUITS
Sometimes I think I grew a taste
for the dead. Did you hear
the tale of young ones buried
for the sake of fecundity,
what feeds the life, how they claimed
the land, sowed and harvested those
sweet things? My hands strangle a mango,
its blood floods down my fingers,
my cheek. You say I know no
manners. I know. I know. I
grew a taste for what lies in deep.
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SEWN BENEATH MY LIDS
Deeper I traverse
into the field of
golden wheat, it gets
stickier, thick with
insane brushstrokes.
A trail of blackbirds
above and behind,
I smother my desire
to undo all by
a single pull of sheaf,
as if all weaved as one
on a woolen patch
that has no form yet
and two needles probed
near the horizon.
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KUSHAL PODDAR is the author of three collections of poetry: The Circus Came To My Island (Spare Change Press, 2014) and A Place For Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publications, 2015), and the forthcoming collection Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse. His work has appeared most recently in Men In The Company of Women and Penn International MK. He lives in Kolkata, India, where he writes poetry and fiction, and creates sketches for an art-poem book when not engaged in his day job as a counsel/ lawyer in the High Court At Calcutta.
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Read more work by Kushal Poddar:
Poem at I Am Not A Silent Poet
Poem at ink sweat and tears
Buy this author’s book: A Place for Your Ghost Animals