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.

*   *   *

forpoem

Dóra Maurer, “Tracing Space I, Tracing Space II, and Plan” (1979) (detail), gelatin silver prints on cardboard and graphite on paper, currently featured in ‘Transmissions’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino for Hyperallergic)

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.

Joe Pan grew up along the Space Coast of Florida and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut poetry book, Autobiomythography & Gallery, was named “Best First Book of the Year” by Coldfront...