Jibbed, old hungers gnaw at your chance
arrival in gelidity. Gleed stirs up in you
my cutty-pipe image, and you laugh, louder
than required, adopting cachinnations as
a channel of expressing emotions that have
no business to be in our basket, as by now
I have peered you on the pentimento of
regrets. If this sounds cavalier, let me assure
you, I understand pain. It is my portmanteau.


Your imperfections play up my perfectness. It is a superb
feeling. Short-lived? How long does hooch last?

Everyone I love faces the might of force majeure.
Do I harken them due to my heart?

If folks express their joy, let it not illude you. In these
flashes reside myriad half-truths and some falsehoods.

Your inadequacies boost me to believe in the invincibility
of my bluster: surety from frostbites in this slalom.


Freemasons of all alignments
recognize their ilk
without semaphores.
Need autographs its accueil
signing the other
to club of consensus.
Like cygnets
with unuttered woops
we seek our way.


Sanjeev Sethi has published three books of poetry. This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015) is his latest. His poems have found a home in Yellow Chair Review, Red Wolf Journal, Off the Coast Literary Journal, Literary Orphans, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Café Dissensus Everyday, Section 8 Magazine, The Jawline Review, Right Hand Pointing, Revolution John, Futures Trading, The Aerogram, Chronogram, The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, New English Review, The Galway Review, In Between Hangovers, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.