> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Three Poems by Amish Trivedi
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/three-poems-by-amish-trivedi/
- Published: 2016-01-13T12:53:34.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:42:41.000Z
- Description: 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.
- Author: Joe Pan
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:17 (2016, 2017, part 1)

*Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected three poems by Amish Trivedi for* [*his series*](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) *that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.*

\* \* \*

![forpoem](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/01/forpoem.jpg)

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*](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692346260/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com)(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.