Of course I had myMother, my first other,My way, my wail,My ladle. And of courseI saw the lie, the light,The heaven on the ceiling.(Feeling, a sun, my heaven.) AnointAt night I did, and by the wayI saw a shah, a shoe,A shadow shorten. I didn’tWant to go to bed. Of courseThe way was long, I knew,And night was what itWasn’t. A lamp left onCould call to me. This would beMy road awhile. And love hadMade me do it.
Sleep Training
Jay Deshpande
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Copyright © 2025 by Jay Deshpande.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
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Marco Giugliarelli
Marco Giugliarelli
Jay Deshpande is the author of Love the Stranger (YesYes Books, 2015) and The Umbrian Sonnets (PANK Books, 2020). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, his poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Deshpande has 20 years’ experience as an educator and has taught at Brooklyn Poets and in the MFA programs at Columbia and Sarah Lawrence. He works for Hawthornden Foundation and as a psychotherapist in private practice.
Winter 2025
New Haven, Connecticut
Yale University
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Meghan O'Rourke
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Will Frazier
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