SANJEEV SETHI - POEMS

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three well-received books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world: Mad Swirl, Peacock Journal, Olentangy Review, Faith Hope & Fiction, Yellow Mama, Serving House Journal, The Penwood Review, Soul-Lit, Poetry Pacific, London Grip, 3:AM Magazine, With Painted Words, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India. 

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Tangle

Clarity of monochord
brings alive me cozing
with myself. I don’t
know what it is? I’m
expressing it, I’ve
uttered it earlier. Your
touch, that bloody
touch coruscates
my interiority. Is this
dividend for investing
in your scrip? Have I
seduced myself to
drench in your doings?

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Negotiations

​Earlier on when silence ambushed us
nifties accelerated calando of awkwardness:
gigs aren’t enough to glue the cordate.
Unpampered hearts require otic regaling.
When our anthem rings whiffle of wind
burnishes its birthmark. We’re in mood
to forgive. We’re willing to forgo emotional
ableism. Shadows and saurian outlines harm
no-one. Let phonic courtesies settle our purchase.
 

Fruition

​Winding its way his feelings hum
berceuses in unknown languages,
she an able translator fixes these 
to suit their setting. The aphonic
are blessed. They don’t require
the arrogance of words to express
themselves. Niceties of nuance
are at their bidding.
 

Legacy

​From your cookie cutter, coddled by you, I’m chaste
as you’re in the churn of my consciousness. Excursus
of such kind intercept and enervate my sessions. I
breathe: extricated from these sandboxes, ensorcelled
by enchainements panned out from my post.  Sense of
shame is a sheath. It caches myriad curses. In my prime
I picked this: like yearnings, the emptiness of interludes.
 

Methodized

Past master at emotional pornography:
it took a coon’s age to switch on and
darken you with description. A rookie
knows no route. We hurt others with
hurts that hurt us, need to be watchful
of hate in hypocorism. Insult cached in
utterance like blood in brogue not the
cartoon of quarrel. Cacophony of kerfuffle
causes nary a knock to the subconscious.

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