Kushal Poddar – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/24/24

May 24, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Cat’s Tongue, House No. One Hundred And Ten

The lane makes a bottleneck.
We have a name for the narrow isthmus;
we forgot that; perhaps the lane’s purpose
is to pour the world into the house at the end,
No. One hundred and ten.
I desire to apprehend if you still live there,
keep the books you borrowed from me
decades ago on an evening remembered
for hidden feelings, fog muffled streetlights
casting unstable shadows of us on my celadon wall.
My mother coughed and coughed as you depart.
I recall you bent, hands fisted, books in your tote.
You didn’t acknowledge that you would not return,
no one could. We stopped and watch a starling caught
in the orange cat’s maw. The cat spoke
with its mouth full. I didn’t know the tongue.

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

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 01/05/24

January 5, 2024 James D. Casey IV

No One Leaves The Party

I have fallen asleep.
Perhaps I have gone home already.
I may imagine the pollens
of her voice, but the hostess says,
“All desire a home. No one wants
to go to one.”

I hear ‘One’ echoing around,
murmur in my sleep,
“One ceases to be one if we
hanker for it too often.”
The dreamy rag under our feet
spreads softness, engulfs the drink I spill.
Hush hides the glass fell for miles
from my hands.

The hostess says, “The place
you want to leave for the home matters.”

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/21/23

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 James D. Casey IV

A Halo- rainbow around my sins

For Robert Frede Kenter

A halo-rainbow surrounds my sins,
its glow almost motherly callous
and concerned as if she stands in
our longevous balcony and see
us playing soccer in the street
without watching us, and hence we
can be the truants from good behaviour,
moral language.

I blink. I cannot remember a rainbow
in my life let alone a halo around the sun.
I murmur, “Forgive me for leading
a monochrome life.” Cold breeze
feels for my pulses, touches my neck.
“Am I alive?” I desire to ask and decides not to.

The grass smells of a memory falling
from a great height, from the parapet of Eden.
The air thronged with the particles
reminds me of how the crows circle and scream
when one of them falls. Light has fallen.
It is sundown soon. I can call you Rob
and say, “Slainté Mhaith.” or hear
the sobbing water of a lake nearby.

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

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/27/22

July 27, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Orgasms

The summer crawls over the hills
one noontime. Our shutters down,
on the sunless bed your revirginated

sea swells and ebbs.
My nose and mouth feel like flypapers
with all your sour and salt water.

I crave to desire summer, welcome it,
but our town at the foot of the hills
takes the worst whipping,
stays a bondage of the heat
until we writhe to recall the safe-word.
Sometimes it is ‘Lemonade’,
and often, ‘Kiss’.

The summer laundry pays homage
to the martyred water,
salutes your taut red underwear
on the clothesline.

The zephyr stirs the pennon.
Two doves coo in our dust wrapped yard
as we make love somewhere inside.

Inside.

There exists a place where invasion
has no victim, and the consent negotiates
through our irises, and when we collapse
as ruins we erect good memories for the history.

My manhood coos now, a tired peace-bird.
You free it inside the cage formed with your fingers.

An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, editor of Words Surfacing, authored eight books, the latest being Postmarked Quarantine. His works have been translated into eleven languages.

Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet

Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe