Poetry Month: Week Four With Kaveh Akbar

This is the final week of poetry month. For the last week I recorded a poem by Kaveh Akbar. My father introduced me to his poetry this past year. His first book is titled Calling A Wolf A Wolf. Check it out!

A Boy Steps Into the Water by Kaveh Akbar

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

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 mecca is a moth
chewing holes in a shirt I left
at a lover’s house a body loudly

consumes days and awaits the slow
fibrillation of its heart a lightning rod
sits in silence until finally the storm
now the boy is scooping up minnows

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