KUSHAL PODDAR

The One Got Arrested And Later Left At Our Doorstep

The missing one is restored to her apparition,

disoriented, oozy-blood,  

smelling like a marsh; two days've passed

since the protest fired up from the gully to the alcázar.

We ask the silence to nurse her.

Tim answers the media in waiting.

We blame the throne obviously.

The air stinks of conspiracy.

The missing one, reinstated, exists in flickers,

now here, now beside the basin, a hologram,

a substance, now a totem archaic,

now a numen, Jesus.

The protest flows with the paradigms.

Tim and I ask her what happened inside;

she seems to miss herself if only by a smudge of soul

or some slogan half finished. 

Silence bandages her; strings her together.

MediaMedia disappears to attend another somewhere.

Monkey's Paw

A teargas shell tore off my bro's hand;

since we called him a primate in childhood

we kept the hand, nicknamed it 'Monkey's Paw',

presented it before every guest in our house,

cherished their shriek; the severed limb

just wouldn't rot; the second hand revolutionists

often borrowed it for their demonstrations,

but no one asked my sibling what the paw

meant to him. Probably a missing link

in the evolution chain between Adam and Cain.

He wouldn't have answered anyway, rather

scratched his arm's end the way one alley cat

scratches the blind bricks when cornered

in dire need of some magic.

 

Selvage

Tiptoeing through the mine field

the first thought crossing my mind

desires to change 'My' of the 'My country'.

The other refugees left an arm here,

a leg there. 'Border' means mother's selvage.

I hold onto a corner of her hem.

Is she my mother? Does not matter.

We avert blasts and oblivion. This way

time will traditionalize a dance form.

One toe here. An augur. One step there.

A stealth stare to the east, west, north,

and birds fly towards an alternative ending.

Are those someone else's arms my shoulders

extend? Do I totter on the legs of one demised?

Prove this an incubus and I

shall change the pronouns.

*****************copyright Kushal Poddar