Jayant Kashyap
This evening I’m not writing a bird;
nests have shut their doors and I cannot
remember the structure of wings—
instead I’m writing arrows, burnt trees,
myths and faux Greek tragedies: in one there is
a woman, doing nothing (or she is not
allowed to); in another a man
is stripping naked and moving towards
water; in another the earth is a woman passively smoking
and the smoke billows to the moon, streaking
its sparse atmosphere; in another warring factions
of ants sitting on two sides of a bowl filled
with sugar; in another a mother is shouting
at her daughter, where’s all the silver
Jeanie; Jeanie
the guests are at our door, hurry
up;—it’s chaos everywhere.
Jayant Kashyap is an India-based poet and bioscientist. He won a Toto Award for Creative Writing in 2025 and the New Poets Prize 2024. Kashyap is the author of Notes on Burials (smith|doorstop, 2025) and Water, published with Skear Zines in 2021.
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