some medicines / don’t work / how lonely
–
change diapers
else
you invent
evangelism
–
suicide, all those dates I didn’t
–
formless herself, she makes an image. animals
were the end
of god
dream is a boy dressed as his abuser sizing aquariums for the hand of a spider
the cricket
makes sense
because it looks
like silence
is doll
always
or never
sick
Calling a Wolf a Wolf
poems by Kaveh Akbar
Alice James Books, 2017
~
review by Barton Smock
~
It has been hard, of late, for me to read poetry because my son is getting older and his sickness, younger. I know my son is not his body, but his body is a crash course in logistical identity. I read Kaveh Akbar’s book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, with its fleeing of density and with its character-driven desertions, and found proof of place. It kept me from sleep’s rootless sideshow, and called to me from its phone booth made of wax. I wrote this note to myself after the first read-through: if blood spoke, or saw- have I ever seen so much person?
I will not quote from the book here, or give guidance from this point, as sharing is sometimes an erasing. I do not think my own appropriations…
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the cause of this grief escapes me and I worry can tunnel breathe. the snake in your love letter sounds real. it takes my belly to things
that are also
pills
minus the pills
given
by shepherd
I don’t know what she saw
in that jar
but she’s been hours
rubbing
my head
with a balloon…
dad switches out the bag on her head
and slips something in my mouth
while saying
mouse
in the dollhouse
I doze for a moment and see a priest
pretend to fall
from a horse, and a stork
act
as it should
I see myself
a form
forged
by a twin, a reincarnation
that perhaps impressed
my photographer
son
[hunger anomalies]
your son
he has
two brains
that’s great
but we’re looking
for water’s
stomach
~
[starvation names its food]
ask the sickest boy what a pig says to the pink phone of god
leave fingerprints for his hand to find
have words
with echo-
he will die
he will not die
laughing
~
[death has too many mothers]
in me like a sympathy pain
is Christ, her language
a fasting
echo
still af
at a time
unlike this
the father
is all
appetite
the chicken, gone
he points
to its ghost…
–
my mouth
is a church, my clock
a Sunday spider
in a dry
toilet
–
(I’m passionate about my grief)
your shadow
dolled up
in the yard
–
cyborg, minotaur
not once
did I watch
them sleep
