Calling a Wolf a Wolf

by Kaveh Akbar

they buy the best heat money can buy

sometimes one will disappear into himself

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

the body is a mosque borrowed from Heaven

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

we measure every victory by the momentary absence of pain there is no solace in history

so much of being alive is breaking the indestructible

would you rather have a day begin in silence and end in song or the opposite you can’t have both

I cannot be trusted to return

paradise lies at the feet of mothers

Even the trap-caught fox knew enough to chew away its leg,

delighting (if such a thing can be said) at the relative softness of marrow.

Nature rewards this kind o...

Starving mice will often eat their own tails

before ceding to hunger.

it’s never too late to become a new thing, to rip the fur from your face and dive dim...

Faith is a story about people totally unlike you building concrete walls around their beds.

Behind each of their faces: a slowly dying animal.

Blessed are those who can distract themselves and blessed are the distractions:

my soul still unsmogged by its station

each new title a tiny seizure of joy

I still loved crayons for their names cerulean gunmetal and corn- flower more than making up for the hues I couldn’t tell apart

even our great-grandparents saw different blues

now I resist acknowledging the riches I’ve inherited

it’s so much easier to catalog hunger to atomize absence and carry each bit like ants taking home a meal

I am insatiable every grievance levied against me amounts to ingratitude I need to be broken like an unruly mustang

supposedly people hymned before names

today words fly in all directions

I miss my mouth sipping coffee and spend the day explaining the dribble to strangers who patiently endure my argle-bargle before returning to their appetites

I am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter

if you teach me something beautiful I will name it quickly before it floats away

Occasionally he’d glance over at my clumsy mirroring,

and smile a little, despite himself.

Bending there with his whole form marbled in light, he looked like a photograph of a famous ghost.

The barbarism of eating anything seems almost unbearable. With drinking however I’ve always been prodigious.

Imagine being the sand forced to watch silt dance in the Nile. Imagine being the oil boiling away an entire person.

Even the terminal dryness of bone hides inside our skin plainly, like dust on a mirror.

the doubt between us hangs like a moon

the fire under my bed is quiet as a fossil

visit me at home where ghosts will watch us from the closet

our messiahs are hopeless and modern they speak only in our sleep

the doubt between us stickies our tongues

there is no such thing as sorcery the spell cast on your cup was ...

visit me at home and pin your money to my skin

That the moon causes tides seems too witchy to be science.

The famous poet said write by the light of your wounds.

Performed pain is still pain.

Some people born before the Model T lived to see man walk on the moon. To be strapped like that to the masthead of history would make me frantic.

Odd, for an apocalypse to announce itself with such bounty.