In the stillness of the main street, my heart pounds.
Here, I’m used to sound: Safety in sonic jottings.
Chimes of demotic idiom calm my inscape, even
though afebrile settings do not fulfill the frame.
The essence of ipseity is muggy with meaning.
After hours, pie-dogs and parcel boys hold sway.
Beneath the awnings is their club. Membership,
as in all sodalities, is adhered to by stringent rules:
For the roofless. Hobos and horse flies populate it.
Cops are guests. *Hafta is their hooch.
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Sanjeev Sethi
Picture Nick Victor
*Bribe
Sanjeev Sethi is an award-winning poet who has authored eight poetry collections. His poems have been published in forty countries and appear in over 600 journals and anthologies. Some credits: London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Stand Magazine, Erbacce Journal, 3:AM Magazine, London Grip, Morphrog, North Dakota Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, NOON | journal of the short poem, Postcolonial Text, and Indian Literature.
Sethi curated Dreich Planet India, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. In October 2025, he edited Fictile Feelings, a poetry special for The Hooghly Review. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by the Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He is the recipient of the 2022 Ethos Literary Award. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the National Defence Academy, Pune. He was conferred the 2023 Setu Award, USA, for poetic excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
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