My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare by Kaveh Akbar
It’s common to live properly, to pretend
you don’t feel heat or grief: wave nightly
at Miss Fugue and Mister Goggles before diving
into your nightcap, before reading yourself
a bedtime story or watching your beloved sink
to the bottom of a lake and noting his absence
in your log. The next day you drop his clothes off
at Goodwill like a sack of mail from a warplane
then hobble back to your hovel like a knight moving
only in Ls. It is comfortable to be alive this way,
especially now, but it makes you so vulnerable to shock —
you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove
in your yard, whole hand still inside. Or you arrive home
after a long day to discover your children have grown
suddenly hideous and unlovable. What I’m trying
to say is I think it’s okay to accelerate around
corners, to grunt back at the mailman and swallow all
your laundry quarters. So much of everything is dumb
baffle: water puts out fire, my diseases can become
your diseases, and two hounds will fight over a feather
because feathers are strange. All I want is to finally
take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled
horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug
on them but secretly I will want that very much.
© 2016 Kaveh Akbar. Today’s poem is taken from the November 2016 issue of Poetry.
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