Calling a Wolf a Wolf. Kaveh Akbar

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      WILD PEAR TREE

      it’s been January for months in both directions frost

      over grass like pale fungus like

      mothdust the branches of the pear tree are pickling

      in ice white as the long white line running from me

      to the smooth whales frozen in chunks of ocean

      from their vast bobbing to the blackwhite

      stars flowering into heaven the hungry cat gnaws

      on a sliver of mirror and I have been chewing

      out my stitches wondering which

      warm names we should try singing

      wild thyme cowslip blacksnake all the days

      in a year line up at the door and I deflect each saying no

      you will not be needed one by one they skulk off

      into the cold the cat hates this place more than he loves

      me he cannot remember the spring when I fed him

      warm duck fat daily nor the kitchen vase filled with musky blue

      roses nor the pear tree which was so eager to toss its fruit so sweet

      it made us sleepy I stacked the pears on the mantle

      until I ran out of room and began filling them into

      the bathtub one evening I slid in as if into a mound

      of jewels now ghost finches leave footprints

      on our snowy windowsills the cat paces

      through the night listening for their chirps our memories

      have frosted over ages ago we guzzled

      all the rosewater in the vase still we check for it

      nightly I have forgotten even

      the easy prayer I was supposed to use

      in emergencies something something I was not

      born here I was not born here I was not