Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Daffod*ls

 

I have no space for humility

lets manifest destiny ourselves out of poverty

let’s lift ourselves out from poetry and

sit in penthouses

lets steal w*ne in the name of c*vil d*sobedience

and sit on the bed-bug smeared mattress

reading WALDEN arm in arm

until friends leave

until everyone

and everyone

moves out

I’ve been increasingly interested in what UK-based international publisher Pamenar Press has been producing lately (see my review of the Laynie Browne trio from last year, which included a title they produced), and the latest I’ve seen is by Toronto-based poet, writer and translator Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, the book-length suite Daffod*ls (Pamenar Press, 2023). This is Mohammadi’s third full-length collection, following Me, You, Then Snow (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2021) [see my review of such here] and the dos-a-dos WJD conjoined with The OceanDweller, by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, trans. from the Farsi by Mohammadi (Gordon Hill Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]. Mohammadi is also the author of the recent and collaborative G with Klara du Plessis (Palimpsest Press, 2023), and already has a fifth full-length poetry collection, Book of Interruptions, scheduled for fall 2025 with Wolsak and Wynn. Structured very different than his first two collections, both of which suggest chapbook-length works conjoined into a larger unit, Daffod*ls is composed as a book-length suite, moving and flowing as a single unit of individual, accumulated lyric sections. The shift is interesting to witness, and one many poets have done over the years (I think back to Toronto poet Kevin Connolly’s infamous debut Asphalt Cigar, for example), watching in real time as a poet’s attention expands beyond the chapbook and into the collection. Set as an assemblage of slightly surreal first-person observations, musings and commentaries, Daffod*ls is a book-length lyric suite across more than a hundred pages of sweep and nuance, offering an expansive gesture into history, time and language. There’s a heft here, one that requires careful, repeated readings, even through what at times might appear a kind of rush. Through the space of Daffod*ls, Mohammadi utilizes the lyric form and space as a means of study, through which to explore the collisions, contusions and conflicts that emerge through the eyes of a narrator situated within and between two weighty world cultures. “I miss behind firmly sat in the middle of a patch of dirt you / can claw into. Its finished. skyscrapers no longer scrape the / sky. clouds have all moved out of our town. I used to write / differently so speak to me NOW, through the noise my hand / is piercing. you’ve got the right idea, sitting with coffee table / magazines and tuned into classical music.” There’s something of the inconsistent puncutations and capitalizations, and the asterisks, also, that provide a particular kind of immediacy, propelling the lines across the page, offering an urgency to these explorations, these declarations.

brace for the itch
brace for all the itches!
when I came here there were still thoughts here
dear Daffod*ls:
WHAT IS THE EASIEST WAY TO AVOID SWEETNESS
                                            there’s this practice of restraint
                                              honed only in teeth
                                              the soil that cultivates
                                                          b*tter ol*ves

I’m curious at Mohammadi’s use of the asterisk, switching out the letter “i” from words for reasons not entirely clear to my reading. I’m reminded of Roy Kiyooka’s use of the word “inglish,” offering a shifted perspective on a language not his first, and one approached with and through caution, aware of the cultural baggage held by his adopted language. Through Mohammadi, the shift is visual above all, and one might wonder if this might be a play on the narrative “I,” the suggestion of a forceful presence even through the absence; what can neither be removed or completely obscured. And yet, Mohammadi switches out the letter only within words, not solo, so the effect is predominantly visual, suggesting highlight or even a kind of drift, beyond pure language. Might this be a daffodil set within the very word? “I swear,” Mohammadi writes, fairly early in the collection, “I’m reading up on pedagogy / and by the discussion / I promise I will understand! / and subtitled with an aster*sk / is a muddy delta of sedimented thoughts / with my cat / nibbling on my toes / and hands / Infinite in their capacity for wonder [.]”

I attest: half my words have disappeared from the dictionary

so I guess this is my language now

whats up?

whats wrong?

whaddya need now?

I don’t have space right now