Calling a Wolf a Wolf

by Kaveh Akbar

I have been so careless with the words I already have.

here I am dying at an average pace envy is the only deadly sin that’s no fun for the sinner this makes sadness seem more like a tradition loyalty to a parent’s past

thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one

Sometimes you just have to leave whatever’s real to you, you have to clomp through fields and kick the caps off all the toadstools. Sometimes you have to march all the way to Galilee or the literal foot of God himself before you realize you’ve already passed the place where you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember the being afraid, only that it came to an end.

in his jaw sometimes one will disappear into himself like a ram charging a mirror when this happens they all feel it afterwards the others dream of rain their pupils boil they light black candles and pray the only prayer they know oh lord spare this body set fire to another

I’m becoming more a vessel of memories than a person it’s a myth that love lives in the heart it lives in the throat we push it out when we speak when we gasp we take a little for ourselves

the geese are curving around the horizon drawing maps a curve is a straight line broken at all its points so much of being alive is breaking

would you rather have a day begin in silence and end in song or the opposite you can’t have both once I went silent for a week once I couldn’t

Because I am here each of these things has a name.

my father believed in gardens delighting at burying each thing in its potential for growth some years the soil was so hard the water seeped down slower than the green seeped up still he’d say if you’re not happy in your own yard you won’t be happy anywhere

there is a moment of startle when a thing really sees itself for the first time a shock of hey me it’s me you in this way we are all each other’s mascots equal and opposite in my dreams I am a cannibal eating long pig in a strange unmappable country it seeps into my living I stay a throb of hunger and brainstem if you move even a little I will take you in my mouth

It’s difficult to be anything at all with the whole world right here for the having.

if the body is just a parable about the body if breath is a leash to hold the mind then staying alive should be easier than it is most sick things become dead things

I spent so long in a lover’s quarrel with my flesh the peace seems overcautious too-polite I say stop being cold or make that blue bluer and it does we speak to each other in this code where every word means obey I sit under a poplar tree with a thermos of chamomile feeling useless as an oath against dying I put a sugar cube on my tongue and swallow it like a pill

So much of living is about understanding scale—a tiny crystal dropped in a river turns the entire river

my kindness is clumsy—I stop a stranger to tie his shoe and end up kissing his knees. I believe in luck and am barely troubled by its volatility. I remember too well the knife held to my gut,

It’s only natural to smell smoke and feel hungry, to lean into the confusion of tongues. If I am to be punished for any of this, it will be thousands of years too late.

I envy their discipline but not enough to do anything about it I blame my culture I blame everyone but myself intent arrives like a call to prayer and is as easy to dismiss Rumi said the two most important things in life were beauty and bewilderment this is likely a mistranslation after thirty years in America my father now dreams in English says he misses the dead relatives he used to be able to visit in sleep how many times are you allowed to lose the same beloveds before you stop believing they’re gone

almost warm a good harm the addictions that were killing me fastest were the ones I loved best

one way to live a life is to spend each moment asking forgiveness for the last it seems to me the significance of remorse would deflate with each performance better to sink a little into the earth and quietly watch life unfold

sometimes a mind is ready to leave the world before its body sometimes paradise happens too early and leaves us shuddering in its wake I am glad I still exist glad for cats and moss and Turkish indigo and yet to be light upon the earth to be steel bent around an endless black to once again be God’s own tuning fork and yet and yet

it’s hard to remember your ribs connect to your backbone until the chill in your chest reaches around for your spine

None of my friends want to talk about heaven. How there is this eternity and the one for those more clerical with their faith. I spend hours each week saying I can’t hear you into a phone and courting the affections of neighborhood cats, yet

frustrated hunt, my offer to improve myself was ruined by the sound it made. How do I look today, better or worse than a medium-priced edible arrangement? I am sealing all my faults with platinum

you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove in your yard, whole hand still inside. Or you arrive home after a long day to discover your children have grown suddenly hideous and unlovable. What I’m trying to say is I think it’s okay to accelerate around corners, to grunt back at the mailman and swallow all your laundry quarters. So much of everything is dumb baffle: water puts out fire, my diseases can become your diseases, and two hounds will fight over a feather because feathers are strange.