Blue Cheese

“let there be cheeses soft and blue and smoked”

— Isabel Galleymore, Of All Things

I have nothing against milk as is, but cheese might be

altogether classic. Brought to life—say risen, say elevated,

also, shaped—by a number of organisms

the human eye could only desire to see. Our want

so great we made gigantic lenses to see the other

centuries before now. And all the while the cheese

soft and blue and breathing

through its million tiny alveoli. Named things

like roquefort and gorgonzola and cabrales

and cashel blue and blue castello and danish blue

—as if human and comic book monsters

and shades of oil pastel blue—

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Jayant Kashyap is an Indian poet. His third pamphlet, Notes on Burials, won the Poetry Business New Poets Prize in 2024 (Smith|Doorstop, 2025). Kashyap has also published a zine, Water, with Skear Zines in 2021, and is currently working on a manuscript about the color ‘blue.’