Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected three poems by Amish Trivedi for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.

* * *

Leaving by Midnight

The heroes of

someone else’s childhood

are dying

in bathtubs and

on the floor between

the bed and the other

woman that came in after

the first one left. Another

stopping that begins

again, refreshed. The world

has come to be unreal to

me. A heart that double-

times, an anxiety

hammer: I like

the silt to fit

around me and

become somebody’s

nerve, a body

revolting.

A Painting

Beneath a

wave but

not drowning be-

cause of, an unrehearsed

society. Some

places are always

reeling from

disasters (first person,

second person: boot

strap). If

standing a-

gainst a

wall is

everyone’s idea

of heaven, we’re

always there again. Our

terror was not

knowing

when to let the quiet

win.

Couvade

Unfeeling is

everything. In our

atelier, we build

things, learn songs by

heart, escape to anywhere

we don’t want to

belong. Sympathy

reigns on us fully. I

never loved nobody with

a foot hovering above.

What is it to know pain

as it seeps into the pavement

and renews itself as a

victim and not a

curse? Like Tylor, a brushing

of nausea, hatching. To be

given the same bed and

warm hand

upon the head lends moment

to mimicry, a way to sit and

do nothing at all. From an

unslept bed, we wander

around the house.

* * *

Amish Trivedi is the author of Sound/Chest (Coven Press), numerous chapbooks, and has poems in Kenyon Review Online, New American Writing, The Laurel Review, plus other places. His reviews can be found in such journals as Pleiades, Sink, and Jacket2. He has an MFA from Brown University and is pursuing a Ph.D. at Illinois State University.