1
…..
“Heaven”‘s sprawling the glory of God.” says the convicted preacher.
The watchtower dawns midst the red bricks.
A racoon, dead half in the electric wire, buzzes once more.
To clean one’s bum feels sacred. Holy texts scratched on the wall
tilts a solitary crucifix right beside the pinup girl.
Heaven descends to the laundry room. Mist. Detergent.
Shanked tattooed skunk the guards are yet to clean.
“Searching for my teenage black cat.” Nuthead Tim keeps saying.
“It is not here,”, says the preacher, “but every darkness sings
the glory of the feline.”
2
Forty Six Words Black Cat
Soggy Edgar Allan Poe makes me sneeze; in the pane, one cloud, dark and pregnant, deflects its spine. My run to retrieve the clothes outside gathers nothing except a fistful of black cat fur in the yard. In another light they might look mythless brown.
3
Black Cat Method
“Here they skinned the niggah.” “Alive?” “He was my grandpa.” Says Tim. I stare
at his achromatic body, alabaster skin, albeit say nothing.
He meets my eyes, unravels his jaws to project the sheath of straw to the
ground, “Once on oyr roof I exchanged my skin with a cat so white that autumn
mistakes it to be a cloud.”
4
Cats
No matter what she say
she returns not in the same way.
Someone must have chinned these.
Her head terms with sayings, fragmented.
A coffee mug sits on the table,
matches a prison dress with a chipped
corner somewhere.
Burn the photos.
Okay. Done.
Build your dead animal with cairns.
He may return, not in the same way.
Kushal Poddar
Illustration Nick Victor
Authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals, Understanding The Neighborhood’, ‘Scratches Within’, ‘Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and now ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’ (Alien Buddha Press)