AVOIRDUPOIS
My mind drafted in mirror-writing
to help you decode me.
While sculling through choppiness
we adopted mismatched cant.
This took time to condense.
In a world packed with people
I miss metaphors of a tie-in.
In aloneness I make do with myself,
speaking in tongues or through
cutouts of short-lived thrill.
Yes, the burden
of being me is heavy.
SANJEEV SETHI
GLISSADE
Fire-hosed I fumed.
Striated by a script
I had no command over,
I looked for locales to ski.
My window had no view.
Living with inquiries
I craved for insight sliding
through portals of piety.
Volitions are thrust by
an invisible toboggan.
In this lies my glide.
SANJEEV SETHI
NEXT>>
LASH
Flashbacks hold pulse of this poetry allowing myth,
muster of musings to transmogrify into treatises
of timelessness. Dealing with nakedness of words
is valorous, veiled ones are easy to undermine. Where
is arbiter of gloom or glee? Trigger points to snickering
or sniveling are mine, it’s a no-no to naysayers. When
one reads it resonates, another’s rendition weakens it:
like sharing strength.
SANJEEV SETHI
SOLILOQUY
Love locked me in a vault
with no valuables.
Ask those who are used
to bleak summers and
bleaker winters
what it is to be reckless in love.
Our togetherness introduced
my shelves to me. I undid myself.
The recently released, This Summer and That Summer, (Bloomsbury) is Sanjeev Sethi’s third book of poems. His work also includes well-received volumes, Nine Summers Later and Suddenly For Someone. He has, at various phases of his career, written for newspapers, magazines, and journals. He has produced radio and television programs.
His poems have found a home in The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Off the Coast Literary Journal, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Oddball Magazine, Hamilton Stone Review, Literary Orphans, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The Peregrine Muse, Otoliths, and elsewhere. Poems are forthcoming in Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Café Dissensus Everyday. He lives in Mumbai, India.