Poem by ​Kaveh Akbar 

Driving Alone In North Carolina 
 
there was this thought I’ve had before about 
the shape of a head      how far it is from a sphere 
how poorly it would roll                      
     I had to pull over 
my skull was burning through my skin 
the delicate features of my face       my cheekbones
and jaw                       glowing            bright white aspirant
stars within the blue
blue blue mountains     
                                                I started to tear up
 it was terrible 
I try to avoid faces when they’re crying 
never sure how to broadcast empathy 
without intruding 
nobody takes 
pictures of people when they cry 
it seems dishonest         a bruised knee   
and a dead uncle looking the same                   
generally it’s hard to remember pain 
which seems evolutionarily wise           if you could recall 
exactly
               the months of misery after the mastodon crushed        
your leg            you’d never hunt again             
even the beast itself
was worse than you remember           try 
see       
it was so much bigger than that

Kaveh Akbar's poems appear recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. His first book is Calling a Wolf a Wolf.The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida. Kaveh founded and edits Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in contemporary poetry. Previously, he ran The Quirk, a for-charity print literary journal. He has also served as Poetry Editor for BOOTH and Book Reviews Editor for the Southeast Review. Along with Gabrielle Calvocoressi, francine j. harris, and Jonathan Farmer, he starred on All Up in Your Ears, a monthly poetry podcast.

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