Contributor: Sanjeev Sethi

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Technique

As you wish them luck on their journey
you distance yourself from the process.

Empiricism

Testing the fragility of my heart
you toughened it to such an extent,
my physician cancelled the prescription.

Wordage

Wherewithal from dead words is
malison lugged in musette bags
across minds: is there a faultless
way of saying thank-you or sorry?

Indoors

Full-scale mirrors in beauty
salons play mute matchmakers.
Inflorescence of feelings
is propitious when vanity
is at its most valuable.


Comeback

On seeing another
journalist being
feted, I squirm.
Seen too many
with wobbly knees,
weak memories.


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Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). A Best of the Net 2017 nominee, his poems are in venues around the world: The Stray Branch, Ann Arbor Review, Empty Mirror, First Literary Review-East, Right Hand Pointing, Peacock Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Synesthesia Anthology: 2013-2017, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread Anthology, Scarlet Leaf Review, London Grip, Peeking Cat Anthology 2017, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Contributor: Sanjeev Sethi

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In this stillness I can see my silence
serenade my sight which beckons smell
to dip into this draught of feelings,
resulting in a rash of rhythms --
autograph from forces I have no control over.

Hieroglyphics of hate try to discombobulate.
I have no space for surgeons with insidious
operations. This vow of words is a serape
I wrap myself in. It makes me serene like
in a séance: my Hippocrene.


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The recently released, This Summer and That Summer, (Bloomsbury) is Sanjeev Sethi’s third book of poems. His poems have found a home in The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Galway Review, Otoliths, Off the Coast, Literary Orphans, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Futures Trading, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Contributor: Sanjeev Sethi

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Those were happy hours. Unlike discounted firewater
ours was a rebate on rejoicings. Adagio to allegro con
brio, like a well-prepared orchestra it played on our
rundle. We laughed vacuously if the timpani was out
of sync. In such a setting nothing mattered. When
wads swell even the stingy are advised not to worry
about chump change. We didn’t fuss, it was shipshape.
From god-knows-where nodules of nastiness erupted?
First love and its privation are usually one’s phantom limb.
For me it’s with all my loves. Why do I live in the past?
Does it free me from fear of mutability?


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The recently released, This Summer and That Summer, (Bloomsbury) is Sanjeev Sethi’s third book of poems. His poems have found a home in The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Galway Review, Otoliths, Off the Coast, Literary Orphans, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Futures Trading, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.