Patterned
Excess on the footsteps of future
slip and spill as the cut glass of
feelings inhale and exhale.
Your toe on the slate of my foot
indite alphabets I can’t infer. My
body molds me into an ink slinger.
Carrying the candies of childhood
to our parleys delivers some distress:
allyship of a certain actuality.
Lulled by love? You probably are
acquiring another tongue, preparing
for another podium.
Hoop
Sans cockade, we cruise along scraggy terrain
oblivious of the oppugn which runs the row.
Steers come by and by. When the equation
is emotional, pulchritude is not on purchase.
Volant emotions if unsated find acquittal
in stanzas. There is almost no deaccession
for books. The mangled are outcasts, like
lovers who have exhausted their animus.
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In Labial Communion
Stains on my lips
compelled my teeth
not to bow to the bleach of togetherness
as another charter hooked us.
In the interim
other drills ensued:
as mundificative realities beat
the rigidity of material exigencies.
Our season saw itself being denied
its domain as the aroma of your armpit
reached another nostril. All we possessed
were wallets with no cold cash in them.
Puzzle
Gouache of our gather
decks the dullness
our huddle now generates
urging us to reframe
the syllabus of the setting.
Between deadlines
and the dinner grid
my fading influence
on your arrangement
reaches me but the thrill
of being a tyro in love
fails to quit my core.
When the phone cuts off,
it is me who reconnects.
Is all this my bugbear or belief?
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Reprise
Love in our lexicon is an invective.
The wind rarely measures
up to my intent.
I clench an unlit candle.
The folds of your thighs
hold the secrets
even as eyebrows
caution me of my course.
Sunshine blunts our sight.
In the moonlight,
jewels within me coruscate.
But there is no emptor.
Value on its own is valueless:
even as the one on the case
places the decimal
in an inaccurate spot.
In your arms, my strain erupts:
warmth incises onto misgivings.
I have held my quill
as long as I could.
Book
My spine
on your shelf
in your profile picture
announcing:
I exist in your essence.
Or maybe outlying traces
do not irk.
That is the trouble
with speculative spurs
they never slake.
Sanjeev Sethi
Sanjeev Sethi has authored five poetry collections. He is published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 375 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. He is in the top ten of the erbacce prize 2021 UK. It has over twelve thousand and five hundred entries. He lives in Mumbai.
