Calling a Wolf a Wolf

by Kaveh Akbar

Regarding loss, I’m afraid to keep it in the story, worried what I might bring back to life,

like the marble angel who woke to find his innards scattered around his feet.

Long ago I lived in Heaven because I wanted to.

Upon landing, the ground embraced me sadly, with the gentleness of someone delivering tragic news to a child.

‘All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.’

it’s been January for months in both directions

I have been chewing out my stitches wondering which warm names we should try singing

he cannot remember the spring when I fed him

now ghost finches leave footprints on our snowy windowsills

ages ago we guzzled all the rosewater in the vase still we check for it nightly

light traveling years to die in the back of an eye.

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

Are you still drinking? Shab bekheir.

For so long every step I’ve taken has been from one tongue to another.

The rest, left to a hungry jackal in the back of my brain.

why anyone would want to swallow so many perfect feathers

I hoarded an entire decade of bliss of brilliant dime-sized raptures

I used to slow dance with my mother in our living room spiritless as any prince

I felt the bark of her spine softening I became an agile brute she became a stuffed ox I hear this happens all over the world

Immediately I began leaking: blood and saliva, soft as smoke.

Listen to me, faithful silence: somehow we’ve become strangers.

The things I’ve thought I’ve loved could sink an ocean liner, and likely would if given the chance.

If morning arrives, I will wash my face.

I am an ugly boy but it’s a pretty day everywhere

men arguing the facts of a story they weren’t even born for

they hate me I am the only person her...

filthy with pride I am standing as ever before

even the river is tired of its slimy brown water there is no end to wanting

be aes- theti- cized to have my bones laced with silver

like the sky I’ve been too quiet everyone’s forgotten I’m here

like a rabid hissing sapphire

sit patiently until invited to leave

his entire digestive system was a tiny museum of pleasure

envy is the only deadly sin that’s no fun for the sinner this makes sadness seem more like a tradition

I’ve never set a house on fire never thrown a firstborn off a bridge

I’ve given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution 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

When you fall asleep in that sort of love you wake up with bruises on your neck.

I don’t have drunks, sirs, I have adventures.

We all want the same thing (to walk in sincere wonder,

but we live on an enormous flatness floating between two oceans.

Sometimes you just have to leave whatever’s real to you,

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.

everyone wants to know what I saw on the long walk away from you

I can hardly picture any of it now save the fox I thought was in the grass but wasn’t

the riptides and the rogue comet blasting toward earth

the fox was so still I could have called him anything

these boys moan more than other boys

they do as desire demands

the music stays in their breastbones they sing songs about storms then dry their shoes on porches