Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar

The poems in Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar are alive and moving. The language is filled with electricity and he forces the reader to follow his rhythm like a dance instructor. These are snapshots abbreviated and punctuated, stories told with pictures. This is one of my favorite books I’ve read and I look forward to reading it again and again. Buy here.

From “Pilgrim Bell”

. . . Can you see the wet.

Azalea quivering.

On its vine. Its ripening.

Dread. If it never rains again.

I would still wear.

My coat. Still wrap.

My socks in plastic. Doing.

One thing is a way.

Of not doing.

Everything else . . .

“Pilgrim Bell”

I demand.

To be forgiven.

I demand.

A sturdier soul.

Every person I’ve ever met.

Has been small enough.

To fit.

In my eye.

From “An Oversight”

I murdered my least defensible vices,

stacking them like bodies

in the surf. An armada of nurses rode in

to cherish the dead: Try harder, little

moons, they said to the corpses. Winter

followed winter. Horses coughed

blood into the sand. Some pain

stays so long its absence becomes

a different pain— . . .