Skeleton Key


︎︎︎ Sanjeev Sethi

︎April 8, 2021


Need-based cliques possess their own ethics,
the conventions of consummation. Is shilly-
shallying a mind or a heart thingy?

Exceptional comicality turns on the waterworks.
Polity honeycombed with funny money begets
meanness and misery. Fill finds its fulfillment.

Sequences of sustenance etch their imprint on
the marquee of our internal drive-in. Sometimes
gelt arrives but grace doesn’t.

Subduction is my way of not confronting reality
as if sight is the only indicator, as if one can’t
see without seeing. Completion finds completion.




















Sanjeev Sethi is a poet in Mumbai, India. His poems have found a home in more than 350 journals or online literary venues. Wrappings in Bespoke is joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. It’s his fourth full-length collection. It will be launched in 2021. Recent Credits: Thin Air Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Kairos Literary Magazine, Pomona Valley Review, Amethyst Review, Berfrois, and elsewhere.