On “Feast of the Ass” by Jahan Khajavi
By Charlie Stuip––––
Fragrant of jasmine and trace fecal matter, Feast of the Ass is a wickedly amorous debut by Jahan Khajavi. Khajavi is an Iranian-American poet born in Fresno who writes and lives in Rome. He most recently worked on English translations of Sandro Penna’s work for the collection Sleepless Traveler. Ass was published in 2023 by Ugly Duckling Presse.
Khajavi writes in rubaiyat and ghazal, both traditions of Arabic verse. These forms were also practiced by 11th- and 13th-century poets Mahsati and Hafez, who, along with other figures from antiquity and myth, are invoked within the book as peers, ghosts, idols, and avatars of the speaker.
Ass has a loving and heretical relationship with tradition, in which the sacred and profane procreate on the page. Love poetry is no stranger to the language of worship, but Khajavi’s odes to ass, “bootyhole” hairs, and “a zipper full” of “yellow wine” are woven with the language of Muslim faith in a way that feels debonair over vulgar, earnest and organic rather than transgressive for transgression’s sake.
Khajavi's agility and command of form seduce us with wordplay like “merkin-tiled mamluk” and rhyming like “fairy, centaur” with “hairy center.” But this bravado is tempered by the debasement of the speaker, who, for one, fantasizes about suicide by fellatio: “To picture Plath inside her oven evermore,/Pizarnik gargling Seconals, & Hedayat gassed for/eternity. Most Merciful, this poet does implore/you let them choke themself on their beloved ’til they burst,/Compassionate, so they may stay in heaven evermore.” Charm and flow gild a pathetic core- the universal abjection of love and fear.
Ass takes place in bedrooms, both the decadent ones of languishing queens and the decrepit ones of penniless wino poets. We spend time in the bedroom of Jahan Khatun, with whom Khajavi shares a first name, a 13th-century Iranian poet and princess. She's written about like a fantasy alter-ego, a dilettante who is relieved of every task, including brushing her own hair, so she can write her poems. Khajavi often revisits the identity of the poet as a coveted royal or prophet, as well as a rambling bum haunting barrooms.
There is a desperation for privacy and an adversarial, sometimes fearful, relationship with the outside “World,” a word almost always capitalized. Name-drops of activists like David Buckel (who self-immolated) and Parvaneh Forouhar (who was assassinated) evoke the violent reality outside Khajavi’s insular, cum-anointed bedrooms. “World” is decapitalized in the presence of the beloved: “When swishing arm in arm,/we are oblivious to others wishing harm/upon their head. The world reminds us that some seek/out our erasure–clock a face for taking out.” Romance offers a temporary salve to ease the wounds of a brutal modernity.
The character of "our beloved's lover" recurs as an externalization of the speaker's self-loathing, “the old, dirty one" to the beloved's youth. This character is both an avatar and an enemy. Khajavi writes, “we, with blade in other hand, won’t hesitate to pay,/safeguard their dreams, the cost: the arm of our beloved’s lover.” It’s as if the speaker’s feelings for the beloved are so debasing, that the most pathetic strains of love must be outsourced to another persona. Khajavi writes, “The voice of our beloved’s lover is struck dumb./The human body is to holy site as theirs/is on our prayer rug–ithyphallic, lewd, & erksome.” While romantic and sexual love is devotional, it also evokes biological and emotional frailties like envy, self-hatred, uncontrollable erections and gushings, and other “erksome” side effects. The motif of the beloved’s lover is a failed quarantine for pathetic love, which spills onto the speaker and the reader.
While the book is weighted by the speaker’s tortured relationship with their alter-ego, I come away from the book delighted and pleasure-bound. The formal density of the book is brightened by a witty celebration of “luscious vices” like wine, leisure, and ass, inviting us to imagine our lover descending into a pool of “sweet Shirazi.” Khajavi holds true to the title with lines like “Each fart of our beloved/is a sung surah from the Quran of asses” and ending the book “buried deep in our beloved’s rectum.” Far from bathroom humor, Feast of the Ass is romantically inclined toward the beloved butt and all of its gifts.
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Charlie Stuip is a poet and filmmaker from Oakland. Her work can be found on NoBudge, Spectra Poets, Swamp Spit and more.
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