Two models chunter on
bowel movement during the dieting
before an assignment.

The cafe is filled with
some hidden crumbs,
but no fly, none at all.9
They have buzzed into
the territory outside this,
where the bodies keep
the slaughterhouses full,
and where the stomachs are empty.

II

Two old men finger-script silence
on each other’s skin.
Those are their wartime memoirs –
of flashes and fire,
of forbidden love and affairs.

Their pet cock and its hens
peck around in the gloaming’s garden.

The men does not have much to write.
‘Hush’ – they scriven again and again
until the skin gives way to the flesh,
and the alphabet tower tall like
buildings deserted and still unhurt
midst an erased landscape.

Kushal Poddar An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, editor of ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being ‘Postmarked Quarantine’. His works have been translated in eleven languages. Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe