Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a PhD in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware.
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Read this episode's poems (along with several others):
Welcome to The Beat. Today we’ll hear the poet Amish Trivedi read his poems "Green Boots," "Watch the Corners," "Number Nine," and "Dying."
Amish Trivedi:
"GREEN BOOTS"
for Matt Henriksen
Along our arms we mark time, mark
the hours and seconds as flesh trusses
slow the body, withholds, keeps us
together from flooding out into
aether. Let’s pray there was a bolt
of lightning and no moment of sadness or
grief or awareness. Along the trail,
we know now to tip a cap or ring a bell
or holler. Or maybe making
everyone laugh disrupts the unrestrained
division of cells, our bodies fighting
to hold on longer before bursting,
pressure equalizing between us
and the universe we sieve into.
"Watch the Corners"
Maybe it’s a blessing that we get to die.
The world I cannot recommend to you.
My miracle year was any before this one.
Rubbing the ashes of two good days into a wounded knee.
The trajectory seems off: the mortar doesn’t hit just the things in its path.
The creek is always rising but you don’t always get to see the houses that flood.
Dead spot in a mirror, or the way the bottom of the ocean runs with rivers of sand.
The warmth of a void welcoming beyond ecology.
The tick of time is counter rhythm, or the value of getting away from who you are.
Poetry asks you to betray yourself by letting out the parts of yourself you would have preferred to keep in.
I learned to shut up about myself.
The things that are just for me, I keep in, keep silent.
Sometimes a whole career is playing against type.
The smaller crisis is reimagined within the larger one.
I grieve a death that no one else seems able to determine.
"Number Nine"
Your relationship to language has melted down around your ankles
and your toes are soaking in words you’ve built up. Too much time
wasted in front of news that seems to echo only the worst things of
our time. We were made for revolution, true, but we have to step
back at times. When the riot comes, they’ll find you anywhere you
are or are not, so don’t be anywhere at all.
"Dying"
This is the last building I’ll see and the last words I’ll read, but I’m never
as far from them as I imagine. We used to sit away from it all and pretend
that silence was what held us, but now the empty space seems more
meaningful than your words ever did. Let me step beyond and see a new
design of my choosing. As if made up sounds had some bearing, I squeak
to say my name now because it has no meaning that I can defend. My
words
are yours now and I have no tones to borrow from and call my own. All I
have left is a glance that no one sees and a sigh which fits in my chest
tightly.
Alan May:
You just heard Amish Trivedi read his poems "Green Boots," "Watch the Corners," "Number Nine," and "Dying." He recorded these poems for us at his home in Elkton, Maryland. Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic, which was published by Co•Im•Press in twenty twenty-one. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a Ph.D. in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware. You can find books by Amish Trivedi in our online catalog. Also look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.
