Calling a Wolf a Wolf

by Kaveh Akbar

It doesn’t take much to love a saint like me.

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

and of course I’m afraid of him of the way keeping him a secret will make him inevitable

I will do anything to avoid getting carried away sleep nightly with coins over my eyes set fire to an entire zodiac

I’m done trying to make sense of any of this no one will believe anything that comes out a mouth like mine

Brow-wrinkling beloveds – shhhh. What I do to my body is nobody’s business.

Practice ignoring whatever you’re able:

It’s amazing what you can find if you just dissect everything.

Jealousy, sexual or otherwise, begins with touch – tears fall on a stone and the stone suddenly wants eyes; a countess is fished from the ocean and her pearls slip quiet into the captain’s pocket.

The iron law of congestion: traffic expands to flood any available

space. Keep a soul open and it’s bound to fill up with scum. It’s all I can do to quiver in and out of my jeans each day, to keep my fingers out of the wrong mouths. A man creates the most joy in the abstract, when you can remove his actual body, its shear carapace and bleeding gums. Cut it away, the entire boring envelope, and marvel at what remains: a pulsing vacuum bag stuffed with rubies and bone spurs, a pink lighthouse only barely heavier than its light.

‘The evidence of a successful miracle is the return of hunger.’

even a lobster climbs away from its shell a few times a life but every time I open my eyes I find I am still inside myself

I’ve been so young for so many years it’s all starting to jumble together

it seems gaudy for them to be so cavalier with their bliss while I’m still here lurching into my labor hanging by my hair from the roof of a chapel churchlight thickening around me

Look under the bandages – an entire saint!

If you spin around quickly enough, it’s almost like being drunk.

I never told you about the tiny beetle I saw crawl out of your ear, afraid you wouldn’t sleep in my bed again if you knew.

I wish you were here so I could bend a mirror around your face, pour you back into you.

for every you there are a hundred moths luxuriously dying their spirits spoiled by excess

a man slips beneath a blanket emerges clutching himself saying this is mine I found it

all men are drawn to the black water moonless the quiet drums a name it’s not yours it’s not mine

to make life first you need a dying star this seems important with you so close to collapsing yourself

Without the benefit of fantasy I can’t promise I’ll be of any use.

Each cascade of fur feels like a little tuft of my own death.

Mostly I want to be letters – not their sounds, but their shapes on a page. It must be exhilarating to be a symbol for everything at once:

I pictured myself reduced to a warm globe of blood and yearned to become sturdy in my end- lessness, to grow heavy and terrible

As long as the earth continues its stony breathing, I will breathe. When it stops, I will shatter back into gravity. Into quartz.

I am more than the worry I make I choose my words carefully we now know some angels are more terrifying than others our enemies are replaceable the stones behind their teeth glow in moonlight compared to even a small star the moon is tiny it is not God but the flower behind God I treasure

I like it fine, this daily struggle to not die, to not drink or smoke or snort anything that might return me to combustibility.

Once, I charged into your body and invented breath.

The ladder you’re looking for starts not on the ground but several feet below it.

I swear to God I swear at God I won’t mention what He does to me I lack nothing I need unless you count everything I want

give me an orgy of sleep give me sleep from every angle

like a fish suddenly breathing air through its eyes

once I saw a girl’s death mask smoothed by the kisses her father gave it nightly

the penalties for my disregard have always been oversoft

deterring nothing I’ve made it clear I am not to be trusted with a body always leaving mine bloodless as ice

sometimes when I’m silent for long enough even the wild around me stops moving

I came to speak about luck but I fear dismantling what is already simple so I will say only that if you are fortunate enough to have a body you shouldn’t leave it lying wet on the floor where anyone could shred it to bits it is worth treating well

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

if you move even a little I will take you in my mouth

When I wake, I ask God to slide into my head quickly before I do.

One day I stopped in a lobby for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and ever since, the life of this world has seemed still.

It’s exhausting, remaining humble amidst the vicissitudes of fortune. It’s difficult to be anything at all with the whole world right here for the having.

if breath is a leash to hold the mind then staying alive should be easier than it is

most sick things become dead things at twenty-four

somehow it happened wellness crept into me like a roach nibbling through an eardrum

for a time the half minutes of fire in my brainstem made me want to pull out my spine

we speak to each other in this code where every word means obey