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.
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)