“A Girl at Some Weekday Café” by Kushal Poddar

for Doug Anderson 


Her legs have minds of their own.
Each owns a direction.
The left one desires a spring day 
and to whine about bipolarity. 
It writhes to leave the city, go 
south where her folks have 
a decent dish of biscuits and gravy
topped with advice about life ready. 
The other adheres to stand still. 
Stillness runs a Zen garden or a café 
busy on weekdays. Stillness can steal
a kiss and measure love by its severity. 
Stillness is rebellion sometimes. 
Opting for hurting her heart 
or lighting a cancer stick are life too. 
Her lower lip reveals a bite mark. 
Her upper lateral incisor releases anxiety 
through love bites. Love is coffee. 
Coffee is black, bitter, devil. 
There is a slur of racism here. Why 
should coffee be all three? 
Does that close one's mind? 
A better thought breezes into her. 
She wants to go to a jazz age portal 
and bob her hair again and again.


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