3 Poems
by Sanjeev Sethi
Bloodline
for my only niece
Biennially, serotinal tidings
announce your arrival, and I begin
to spruce up my cache of chestnuts.
Even prayers need polishing.
Are we adults? How do we erase
the initial hesitancies in our chinfests?
Who will launder the limbus?
I’m always out of practice.
We’re not always at pink tea.
There is ease and exchange.
Care and some confusion.
Your posts on peregrinity, please.
Elements in your energy
connect with my corners.
This knells on my nothingness
ensouling my omertà.
*Originally published in Sentinel Literary Quarterly
Maturescence
There is verbal gore.
Kris of words slit our skin.
Lesions as raw as another’s
revenge look back at us.
Carmine flood of feelings
sinuates over the napery.
But there is no burn.
The hood of sapience
cushions us, vulneraries
come by and by.
*Originally published in Pyrokinection
Lifeblood
A prinker engages with temporal superficies. This
is a middling slip-up in tourbillion of earthly spice.
Why niggle? There are myriad graver misdeeds.
Each has to charter an internal codification identi-
fying with their whatness.
Whether in heather, ebony, or ivory the exogenous
heads our selection. Someone may be a posthumous
baby but no-one is born days after the demise of his
or her birth mother. All this as polemics of equality
are as old as Methuselah.
*Originally published in The Recusant
BIO: Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He has been published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 400 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet #1, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He was recently conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
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