Jahan Khajavi, Feast of the Ass

 

On the Eve of Our 31^st Birthday

We were born to be served—not like a king,
but Peking duck or a cake scribbled upon
with white frosting: the number 31.
Jerking Off to a Turk. Short poem in
sugar while a ballad on our beloved’s
sweetness would be a long & wordy one.
The great shame of this world is that it can
construct a billion atom bombs but it can
not clone a drop of their youthful gusto.
They’re teenaged baklava—speak in honey!
Let us peck the pistachios from their
halvah face. Let us be the old, dirty one.

I’m charmed by the full-length debut, Feast of the Ass (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023) by Fresno, California-born Iranian-American poet Jahan Khajavi, composed as a lyric collection of swagger, performative gestures and declaratives both joyous and thoughtful. As the final poem in the sequence “Eve of the Feast of the Ass” offers: “If you were here, Jahan, you would adore the form / the trees in Autumn take. To watch their gold leaves dropping, / to witness in the still after a winter storm / a bough burdened with snow & how it heaves, dropping / finally its load—a heap of white on white.” Described by Vogue (as included in Khajavi’s author biography) as composing “wildly amusing & explicit queer poetry,” the poems in Feast of the Ass range from standalone short poems to extended sequences of short bursts that string through the collection, writing overtly queer and sexualized poems that also reference writing retreats, Persian lyrics and the Rubiyat, travel, love and magnolia. In many ways, these are meditative poems with elements of swagger and sex, allowing the whole package to exist simultaneously, without contradiction. “Step into this room as if our confidence / to hear our messy arguments.” the sequence “Profane Geometry” offers, “Who cares about / the subjects—be they love or death or common sense.” There is such a sense of joyful play in Khajavi’s rhythms alone, providing a delightful cadence in poems such as the opening piece, “An Organ That Vibrates for You.” The repetition of phrase and rhythm in this particular poem exists as an anchor, which itself allows other elements their myriad directions, knowing how grounded they remain, and playing off those two seemingly contradictory narrative structures. There is something of the rhythm as well that provides calm, a comfort; something akin to prayer. As the poem begins:

Roughly everything’s to share in this room.
Buried treasure here & there in this room.
Goldfish in vases topping mirrors &
flowers in bowls on each stair in this room.
A mattress not unlike a peacock throne
with all of its stains laid bare in this room,
on the floor a rug that when it farts lets
out a little Persian air in this room.
You could see the furniture if it were
not covered with thick black hair in this room.
Sitting on stiff wooden shelves, hardbacks by
Baraheni & Baudelaire in this room.