Apt. 9 Press : Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi + Jo Ianni,

 

laid down to theirbuilding blocks
word and word and thenbrick-light

the attack and decay
of every action-sentence
made its own assemblyline

like take the darkroomfor example
and build an apiary

like take the gun chamberfor example
and build an apiary

like take the steamengine for example
and build an apiary

like take the black pagefor example
and build an apiary(Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi)

Itis always an exciting mail day when the latest titles from Cameron Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press land [see my notes on his prior titles, SOME SILENCE: Notes onSmall Press and APT. 9 PRESS: 2009-2024: A Checklist, here], withthe two latest being Toronto poet Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi’s Gavel  sound. Gravel sound. (February 2025),produced in a numbered first edition of eighty copies, and Toronto poet JoIanni’s FAT LUCK AND FUZZY SONG (April 2025), a title produced in anumbered first edition of one hundred copies. It is interesting in how bothtitles, hand-sewn and gracefully-produced, and with French flaps, hold extendedpoems that each offer a different sense of ongoingness, of chapbook-lengthstructure, one short poem and section and fragment at a time.

Thereis such lovely detail to the moments, the fragments, of Khashayar’s Gavel sound.Gravel sound., offering poems and condensed fragments and short sketches,holding to the smallest possible utterance amid what might be an extended,single piece. “a poem / is just / what light / thinks about,” Khashayar writes,just near the end. There isn’t a wasted word throughout this entire sequence,taking the entirety of a single poem and dismantling it across such a length ofthought. “I’m struggling to kich the poem / out of my neighborhood,” offers anearlier poem-fragment, “sea urchins / like riddles / or ruin // flicked by toetip / into lake Ontario [.]”

Thereis something really interesting in the way that Khashayar’s work has progressedthrough and since the publication of their first two collections—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 SaeedTavanaee Marvi, trans. from the Farsi by Mohammadi (Gordon Hill Press, 2022)[see my review of such here]—extending into projects of smaller moments thataccumulate and stretch in really fascinating and quiet ways, such as theirthird full-length collection, Daffod*ls (Pamenar Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], or through the collaborative G (with Klara du Plessis; Palimpsest Press, 2023). There’s already a further full-length due this fall with Wolsak and Wynn, which I am very much looking forward to.

    under
       neath the
       patient
       spider
       golden
in its thereness
    I laid
  beside you
     weepy
  a landscape for ants
for grass to tickle
pushing up dandelion
        clocks and
         raising up dirt

JoIanni is one of only a handful of repeat authors through Apt. 9 Press, with inside inside inside appearing with the press in 2022 [see my review of such here]. Akin to Mohammadi, Ianni’s FAT LUCK AND FUZZY SONG (the openingpart of the title I keep mis-reading as something much ruder, admittedly) is abeautifully-crafted long elegant thread of extended sequence, constructed outof condensed curves, bends and moments, lyric stretches and the weight of theoccasional underlined passage or word. The underlined passages are curious, andthere were moments I wondered if these were to highlight for the sake of apoem-title for these small, self-contained fragments, but the fact that otherpoems hold more traditionally-placed titles while still offering underlinedpassages contradicts that, making me wonder if these are simply points in eachpoem where the eye is to be drawn, slightly, and possibly held. The poems arequiet, thoughtful, odd, with gestures and utterances in the direction of Robert Duncan, here and there, which is curious, the poem “Itty bitty ditty,”“for Robert Duncan + his cat,” that includes “Where else will I go but heredeeper still wish my knees bent and belly full of soup / There’s no more I cando for the moon than glory [.]” Oh, how I delight in the quiet, extendedstretches of Jo Ianni’s lyric structures; more people should be reading thework of Jo Ianni.