Jahan Khajavi, Feast of the Ass

 

On the Eve of Our 31stBirthday

We were born to be served—notlike a king,
but Peking duck or a cakescribbled upon
with white frosting: thenumber 31.
Jerking Off to a Turk. Shortpoem in
sugar while a ballad onour beloved’s
sweetness would be a long& wordy one.
The great shame of thisworld is that it can
construct a billion atombombs but it can
not clone a drop of theiryouthful gusto.
They’re teenaged baklava—speakin honey!
Let us peck thepistachios from their
halvah face. Let us bethe old, dirty one.

I’mcharmed by the full-length debut, Feast of the Ass (Brooklyn NY: UglyDuckling Presse, 2023) by Fresno, California-born Iranian-American poet Jahan Khajavi, composed as a lyric collection of swagger, performative gestures and declarativesboth joyous and thoughtful. As the final poem in the sequence “Eve of the Feastof the Ass” offers: “If you were here, Jahan, you would adore the form / the treesin Autumn take. To watch their gold leaves dropping, / to witness in the stillafter a winter storm / a bough burdened with snow & how it heaves, dropping/ finally its load—a heap of white on white.” Described by Vogue (asincluded in Khajavi’s author biography) as composing “wildly amusing & explicitqueer poetry,” the poems in Feast of the Ass range from standalone shortpoems to extended sequences of short bursts that string through the collection,writing overtly queer and sexualized poems that also reference writingretreats, Persian lyrics and the Rubiyat, travel, love and magnolia. In manyways, these are meditative poems with elements of swagger and sex, allowing thewhole package to exist simultaneously, without contradiction. “Step into thisroom as if our confidence / to hear our messy arguments.” the sequence “ProfaneGeometry” offers, “Who cares about / the subjects—be they love or death orcommon 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 OrganThat Vibrates for You.” The repetition of phrase and rhythm in this particularpoem exists as an anchor, which itself allows other elements their myriaddirections, knowing how grounded they remain, and playing off those two seeminglycontradictory narrative structures. There is something of the rhythm as wellthat provides calm, a comfort; something akin to prayer. As the poem begins:

Roughly everything’s toshare in this room.
Buried treasure here& there in this room.
Goldfish in vases toppingmirrors &
flowers in bowls on eachstair in this room.
A mattress not unlike apeacock throne
with all of its stainslaid bare in this room,
on the floor a rug thatwhen it farts lets
out a little Persian airin this room.
You could see thefurniture if it were
not covered with thickblack hair in this room.
Sitting on stiff wooden shelves,hardbacks by
Baraheni & Baudelairein this room.