Tag: seth jani

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At the Gates – Seth Jani

At the Gates

The quotidian deaths keep piling 

their black ruins into the earth. 

Life approaches on hushed feet, 

carrying her cage of multicolored birds. 

We best make our peace with these mausoleums, 

these open houses of the rain. 

Rickshaws carry our aging parents 

to the gates of the city. 

Their eyes are exhausted 

by the cascading light. 

After so much stone 

I’m hungry for the sight 

of dragonflies. 

Those shimmering blue bodies 

filling my hands. 

Those dark jewels  

quietly clutched 

from a burning sky. 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. Visit them at www.sethjani.com.

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Fireworks – Seth Jani

Fireworks

Another year, and a golden fistful of moon 

is dropped over the city, exploding nearby. 

Glitter-fish, bodies of disintegrating angels, 

and galaxies, like heart-states, rising and falling. 

When this life ends, I don’t want to disappear 

into the glacial darkness, wavering, 

a barely audible hum. Let the change be tectonic. 

Rocketing as one would expect  

pent-up love to rocket. Entering the stratosphere 

with streamers of light. Creating a halo 

in the otherwise desolate hull  

of time and space. Letting it be known 

that there is always, somewhere, 

a universe on fire. 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. Visit them at www.sethjani.com.

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Storm Cellar – Seth Jani

Storm Cellar

This is one of the paradises 

that we get to 

by opening the blue-flaked door 

and entering the earth, 

by putting everything on hold 

and saying I love you, 

even as the battering rams 

blow through our houses 

and the malevolent rain 

drills into the floor, 

leaving us to stumble 

into a second darkness, 

where the white flowers 

are stark as serpents, 

and the root of grace 

is nearer to our feet.

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. Visit them at www.sethjani.com. 

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Telemachus Creek – Seth Jani

This is the first of four poems by Seth that we’ll be posting over the course of the next few days. Each of them handle different subject matter, but all with similar grace and fluency. Enjoy.

Telemachus Creek

From every faultline of darkness 

a blue dragonfly skirts 

the glistening stone. 

This is the grace of August 

coming to haunt us, 

to fill the paltry day. 

I cup my hands  

and they fill with water. 

I waltz in the descending night. 

Overhead, a daylit moon 

unsettles the heart, 

dislodges the comfortable chains, 

and the conflagrant self 

steps out of the body, 

solitary and luminous, 

like that single bright godetia  

on the summer hill. 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. Visit them at www.sethjani.com.