Kushal Poddar
Corporeal
In the mirror I see the double helix of my father’s sadness and my mother’s hope form and shape
my flesh inside out until the transparent becomes opaque. Clarity becomes vague. There glints a
smile. There is that grin. Seeing Cheshire everywhere means an obsession.
Today seems to be the beginning of the season of less food more fluids. The body knows the thirst.
And craving. My corpus disappears as a thousand ants released from my spine eats away the glass.
Body Bad, Body Good
1
Body
Until my late forties I didn’t scribble any note or doodle anything on a book, not even an
underline. My mother taught me not to do so in my nursery. I have been an ever lamb.
Not until I found a book in my body I marked a line. The book, scrivened by the I who lived this
life in another time, outside this life, was hurled inside through my eyes. I picked it up from a
spot between my id and my ego.
There is a sentence “I cannot bear the responsibility of memory anymore.” I underline it again
and again wondering if the weight of memory depends on the body or not, perhaps on how one’s
skin shines or his hair, how one stands tall or bend, or how one stammers a badly rehearsed monologue.
2
The Monologue
The body desires, but cannot move an inch towards the goal. Atychiphobia and physical
inefficacy contribute to my indolence. I slouch, slip, sleep, suffer a dream. There hums a bee
within. The flowers blooming have no odors because they are born behind the nostrils. “I can be
a great bully.” I pick up the pruning scissors.
The body ranks in a procession. The body knows the riot. The body knows the colour of its skin
seen in the mirror. If everything is inside then why do I see the pages journaled, fate lines drawn
on it by a crow holding a pencil between its beaks.