Sanjeev Sethi, two poems

Cake

It was the matriarch’s seventieth birthday.

Seventy-first but we will let that pass.

Some un-truths are delicate like lace on

lingerie. Her sous-chef son-in-law baked

confections. No one gushed so he good-

humouredly inquired of them. Dead air

combed his query. When a quidnunc

eyeballed, she was told, “In our family

nobody lies.”

Linn

(1)

Transparent as tears you glide

into my territory. Memory jags

never cease. Hendecasyllabics

hound till they can. I abhor the

abstemious: they remind me

of indulgences.

(2)

Surreptitiously you saunter in and

out of my dome, helplessly I play

host. Even after these many years

there is no awkwardness. The

exchange is easy, accusations too.

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: Stickman Review, Ann Arbor Review, Mad Swirl, Neologism Poetry Journal, Olentangy Review, Home Planet News, The Journal, Morphrog 16, Communion Arts Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.