Kaveh Akbar & Javier Zamora

 

A country embraces
absence like something it’s earned—
the gnarled math of dust.

You tried to legalize us,
brief hope. No, no se pudo.

Kaveh Akbar

Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler

 

visiting a past self. Being anywhere makes me thirsty.

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

As a boy, I spit a peach pit onto my father’s prayer rug and immediately

 

it turned into a locust. Its charge: devour the vast fields of my ignorance.

The Prophet Muhammad described a full stomach as containing

one-third food, one-third liquid, and one-third air.

 

For years, I kept a two-fists-long beard and opened my mouth only to push air out.

One day I stopped in a lobby for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres

and ever since, the life of this world has seemed still. Every night,

 

the moon unpeels itself without affection. 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.

Kaveh Akbar

Calling a Wolf a Wolf (impatient)

Kaveh Akbar

                  PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC WITH MOTHS AND RIVER

​                              some moths don’t even have mouthparts using
                              only stored caterpillar energy
                              their lives are measured in days scissoring
                              tributaries        for every you there
                              are a hundred moths luxuriously
                              dying their spirits spoiled by excess

what you lack and the punishment for your
                                                                        lacking are the same          paling tulips gray-
  ing fingernails a body nearly stops
                                                                                            then doesn’t I have seen it a man slips
                                                                       beneath a blanket emerges clutching
                                                                      himself saying this is mine I found it

                              rivers often do the same thing claiming
                              whatever they pour into           cathedrals
                              gardens snakeholes do you see how afraid
                              I am for you          all men are drawn to the
                              black water moonless the quiet drums a
                              name it’s not yours it’s not mine listen

       to make life first you need a dying star
  this seems important with you so close to
    collapsing yourself the mute swan’s final
              burst of song        I know you’ve tried this before
                                                                 when they asked where it hurt you motioned in
                                                                                 a circle to the ground under your feet

​

Kaveh Akbar

 

Heritage

Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old Iranian woman, was hanged on October 25th, 2014, for killing a man who was attempting to rape her.


the body is a mosque borrowed from Heaven     centuries of time

stain the glazed brick    our skin rubs away like a chip

in the middle of an hourglass        sometimes I am so ashamed 


of my sentience how little it matters        angels don't care about humility       

you shaved your head        spent eleven days half-starved in solitary

and not a single divine trumpet wept into song      now it's lonely all over 


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 


in books love can be war-ending       a soldier drops his sword to lie forking oysters

into his enemy's mouth        in life we hold love up to the light

to marvel at its impotence         you said in a letter to Sholeh 


you weren't even killing the roaches in your cell       that you would take them up

by their antennae and flick them through the bars into a courtyard      

where you could see men hammering long planks of cypress into gallows 


the same men who years before threw their rings in the mud       who watered them 

five times daily        who shot blackbirds off almond branches

and kissed the soil at the sight of sprouts       then cursed each other when the stalks 


which should have licked their lips withered dryly at their knees        may God beat

us awake      scourge our brains to life       may we measure every victory

by the momentary absence of pain       there is no solace in history      this is a gift 


we are given at birth     a pocket we fold into at death        goodbye now you mountain      

you armada of flowers         you entire miserable decade in a lump in my throat       

despite all our endlessly rehearsed rituals of mercy       it was you we sent on