"Horror Stories Have No Subtitles" and "Orgasms"

Horror Stories Have No Subtitles

After the missile hits the school the boys stream out laughing. They laugh for no reason. They laugh at the reasons.

The same happened, if you recall, when the gas leaked in the other town, other world, the third kind.

Some could see them running out from their sleepy dwellings. They laughed and laughed.

Most cannot see them. Nonetheless they laugh with their skeleton bared, and with their skin blued, at our innocence. They mock with the aggressors and the victims alike. Most cannot see them.

 


 

Orgasms

I
 
The summer crawls over the hills
one noontime. Our shutters down,
on the sunless bed your revirginated
sea swells and ebbs.
My nose and mouth feel like flypapers
with all your sour and salt water.
 
I crave to desire summer, welcome it,
but our town at the foot of the hills
takes the worst whipping,
stays a bondage of the heat
until we writhe to recall the safe-word.
Sometimes it is 'Lemonade',
and often, 'Kiss'.
 
 
II
 
The summer laundry pays homage
to the martyred water,
salutes your taut red underwear
on the clothesline.
 
The zephyr stirs the pennon.
Two doves coo in our dust wrapped yard
as we make love somewhere inside.
 
Inside.
 
There exists a place where invasion
has no victim, and the consent negotiates
through our irises, and when we collapse
as ruins we erect good memories for the history.
 
My manhood coos now, a tired peace-bird.
You free it inside the cage formed with your fingers.

 

 

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

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 - 22:02