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© 2017 by Kaveh Akbar
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States
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Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington.
Alice James Books
114 Prescott Street
Farmington, ME 04938
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Akbar, Kaveh. author.
Title: Calling a wolf a wolf / Kaveh Akbar.
Description: Farmington, Maine : Alice James Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015979 (print) | LCCN 2017028090 (ebook) | ISBN 9781938584725 (eBook) | ISBN 9781938584671 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Alcoholism--Poetry. | Alcoholics--Rehabilitation--Poetry. | Poetry. | BISAC: POETRY / American / General. | POETRY / Middle Eastern. | POETRY / Inspirational & Religious.
Classification: LCC PS3601.A43 (ebook) | LCC PS3601.A43 .A6 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015979
Alice James Books gratefully acknowledges support from individual donors, private foundations, the University of Maine at Farmington, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Amazon Literary Partnership.
Cover art: “Il Digiuno” by Nicola Samori / 2014 / Oil on copper / 100 x 100 cm / Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART
NOTE TO THE READER
Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size:
we are given at birth a pocket we fold into at death goodbye now you mountain
Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the line break will be marked with a shallow indent.
CONTENTS
4 PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC WITH HOME INVADER AND HOUSEFLY
5 RECOVERY
7 CALLING A WOLF A WOLF (INPATIENT)
8 STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE
9 PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC WITH WITHDRAWAL
10 SOME BOYS AREN’T BORN THEY BUBBLE
11 HERITAGE
12 MILK
13 PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC WITH DOUBT AND KINGFISHER
16 PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC THREE WEEKS SOBER
17 SUPPLICATION WITH RABBIT SKULL AND BOUQUET
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