Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in the New Yorker, Poetry, the New Republic, Best American Poetry, the New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the author of the book Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017) and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry, 2017). A recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. Born in Tehran, Iran, he currently teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson College.
The stillness you prize.
Won’t prize you back. Two beefsteaks.
Ripening on a windowsill. A purple tray.
Piled with coal. From the field.
Of solemn brothers calling.
Your name in unison you learn.
Men are irrelevant but.
Persistent symmetries are not.
the waiters milled about filling sumacshakers clearing away plates of onion andradish my father pointed to each person whisperedPersian about the old man with the silver [...]
My reward for waking: close walls
and limestone dust, spit
evaporating from my tongue. First
I count and recount
my toes, throw out grain
for the carp, snatch a femur
and of course he’s beautiful
goosebumps over his ribs
like tiny fists under a thin sheet the sheet
all mudwet and taste of walnut
go ahead tread on me
see if I care I am already
unhuggable as a cactus
and too big to fit on any
lap keep your excuses
short or better yet keep
them to yourself any
Do I have to talk about fear?
So much has already been said
about hidden spiders, compass needles
lodged in the soft of an eye.
It’s normal to do it alone, the feint-and-jab
of forgetting. I believe in only what I can recite
from memory, like the ninety-nine names
for thirst: soft-hell, root-torn-from-soil, rain-
Away from the cruel magnification
of a shaving mirror, I clean up well.
I am content with orange teeth and salty
skin, with having borrowed my beauty
from the ocean. See my kelpy eyes, the pearl
on my tongue? Flatter me, flatterer! I still care
about dignity, like a blindfolded duke
being led to the gallows. It’s hard not to smile
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