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by Kaveh Akbar whether it was meant for you or not any gift can be destroyed crushed like a pill under a spoon the blood of a grape long taut muscles an entire pituitary kingdom when we met you were romancing mathematics predicting the position of Saturn during a morning rainstorm you put your ear to the eye of the telescope said you could hear an army of panicked birds trying to find the sun a problem like you was no problem at all we split for the shoals drunk sabre-rattlers trying to come up with rhymes for Jupiter every year children put their lips on toy flutes carved from the hollow stems of hemlock their clumsy whistling announces a terror to come the reluctance of a body to sleep has everything to do with hunger the fear we might starve before waking or stay trapped in sleep like larval baby rats spinning down a drain here’s how you vanish desire pierce your tongue with a darning needle it will hurt no worse than the cactus spines once stuck in your gums unlearn any anthem praising wingtips or slivered cheese understand some fathers will scourge every child they receive and others will vanish leaving nothing but the shadows of their linens hanging on the line I remember the smell of salt in the cotton of your shirt you saying my heart line tasted like copper which meant I’d be rich in love I was too pleased at the immediate implications of this to mention the coins I’d been palming in my pocket the moment felt like a crown snatched from the head of a prince your mouth hoof- beats and buttermilk instead of a lime you bit into my thigh drew blood thick as pomegranate syrup it’s been proven that even crows can remember faces recall the landmarks of a skull the contours of an eye socket surely you understand what I’m getting at I remember all of it I’m grateful for the joy you were able to bring  photo by Paige Lewis Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. His first book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published by Alice James Books in the U.S. and by Penguin in the U.K. He is also the author of a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry. Born in Tehran, Iran, he currently teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.
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