2 poems

by Jayant Kashyap

a man years after returning from the airport one night, having seen his daughter off for the first time

The night you left, I began

building boats – the constant

chiselling into wood / like punishment / like

saying hurt isn’t necessarily the end

of something / like worrying too much

and not let it show. I’ve now built

a total of eighty-eight boats, I’ve willed

them all to you.

melancholy

note from the author:

“melancholy” is a found poem borrowed from chapter 9 of Rebecca Netley’s wonderful novel The Whistling. And, considering the fact that this piece, in itself, comes from a gothic horror piece, “melancholy” is a piece that is nothing if not particularly ominous.

Jayant Kashyap, the author of the pamphlets Unaccomplished Cities and Survival, will publish his New Poets Prize-winning third pamphlet, Notes on Burials, with smith|doorstop in 2025.