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# Two Poems by Jay Deshpande
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-jay-deshpande/
- Published: 2019-09-25T11:01:43.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:39:21.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Jay Deshpande for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:34 (2019, 2020, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/12/francoise-grossen-five-rivers.jpg)

Françoise Grossen, “Five Rivers” (1974), dyed manila (photo by Benjamin Sutton)

## In the Time of Discernment

Your hair roams the room while you sleep  
Loud as a vineyard  
Disquisitioning on the color of rope  
The first epic of blood  
The sound of a hymnal closing  
In a city of brief peace  
My posture goes undetected  
Be gentle with me  
The low drug of your hair  
Keeps the hour company  
I watch a silence form  
My fears begin to ordain themselves

## December

No, not the regulatory cousin,  
The season’s snap in the fist of the branch  
Get a hold of yourself: someone is in love with you  
In the other room you don’t think you have  
The keys to. Don’t think.

Where a heartbeat is the fruit of sound  
We call brisk grace, your heretofore.  
Wait and wait to see your friends  
Become loose shapes at the edge of a haptic choir.

This is a ballad; I am a nocturne  
Approaching the unit of landing  
Is it landing, or.  
Or else.

The wise one isn’t speech.  
The wise one doesn’t ask have you ever been afraid. Knows better.  
The better wise one is a muscle  
Halfway across the back you can’t reach

Or haven’t tried yet. So you’ll never.  
Everyone wants to unearth the cold fabric.  
Some have a coffee some have a name.  
In the end who ever knows what time it was.

\* \* \*

Jay Deshpande is the author of [*Love the Stranger*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1936919338/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com)and [*The Rest of the Body*](https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/the-rest-of-the-body?ref=hyperallergic.com) (both from YesYes Books). Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in *Boston Review, AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Narrative*, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the Scotti Merrill Award, has received fellowships from Kundiman and Civitella Ranieri, and is currently a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.