Spiral
i.
I carry myself like a djinn.
Everywhere I give and I take from myself
everything. Sometimes I’m running
away from / sometimes
off of this spiralling runway of my body—
I look for emergency exits mid-
flight but I don’t want off of
anywhere or off to—sometimes a bottle
holds me like a tentpole / sometimes
it’s the other way round; and we bottle-
neck / we flagship each-other.
ii.
And sometimes I claustrophobe
and then bird;
And then a nest’s too full again!
Sometimes a bottle takes me in
and now I am a djinn—
but once I’m in I want out and—again!—
I’d give away
everything.
JAYANT KASHYAP is an Indian poet. His third pamphlet, Notes on Burials (Smith|Doorstop, 2025) won the Poetry Business New Poets Prize in 2024. His zine, Water, was published by Skear Zines in 2021. He is currently working on a manuscript about the colour ‘blue’.
Read more by Jayant Kashyap
Poem at Poetry Foundation
Poems at The Poetry Society UK
Poems in The Bombay Literary Magazine
Personal website