Secret Sanctuary

He meets the cat again in the evening
He has a fish fry crumbled in a bag. The cat meows in a broken voice as if winter just touched the tip of a tree and the leaves are leaving for the following life.
‎”I think I saw my son in a stranger’s face today”, he says, “He smokes. Do you think he smokes nowadays? I used to.” He sports a faint smile, “I remember the last cigarette. I put it out and brushed my hair with my fingers, was ready to kiss my son’s mother. She said, I smelt awfully.”

I I

The cat tells the wind, “This fence feels like winter.” “How so?” howls the wind.
“It runs such a short distance that goes on forever, stiff, slow, loony, broke where moonshine gushes out, sleepy and insomniac.” The cat finds a leafless shrub’s thorny leaflet to read. It remembers all its kittens gone into oblivion. The cat doesn’t mind. It feels hungry but would have rejected anything edible. It remembers the house where it dropped the orange kitten. It lost all. It doesn’t mind.

Kushal Poddar has been featured amongst the poets for the month December by Tupelo Press, Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s Best of 2014. He presently lives at Kolkata and is the editor of the online magazine ‘Words Surfacing’. He 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” (Hawakal Publishers, India) and Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse – A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press, Phoenix)