Gold Fish
The house halves the wind.
One half, empty, holds the green still.
The other says it touched
the cremation pier and the garden where
flowers have not arrived this year.
The house hoists a cloud,
and a dark bird. I mistake them for
A black gold fish in a bowl.
The Parrot
No one needs to know
that you laughed, and
yet you did not stoop to pick it up,
that laughter, as if it would curse
the good thing going on.
Night is a stuffed parrot
that everyone in the pub
has stopped to look at
after the first glance.
It sings all the names
your friends possess. It sings
those stories they know,
even before told for the first time.
Peninsula
On the night of the regime change
I found my old man on the flat roof
measuring the strong wind
the weather office predicted
with his mane, and his head
looked darker amidst marred halo
of his messy hair. I hold his hand,
haul him inside. In his hair
the glitters of fireflies remind me
of the shoreline seen when we could
afford vacations. Regime changed
I tell him. He says that
the gale predicted is stuck near the peninsula.
About the artist
Kushal Poddar has authored eleven books, the latest being ’21 Gun Salutes and Hemingway Syndrome’. His works have been translated into thirteen languages, and he has been a sub-editor of Outlook magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing and Zeroes Garden, and he does illustrations for various magazines. He is the director of MasticadoresIndia ezine.
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/
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