AVOIRDUPOIS

Poetry by Sanjeev Sethi ± Art by Lisa Cirenza

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.

 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.

 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.

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.

See more art from Lisa Cirenza at www.cirenza.com  on twitter: @ArtCirenza

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.