DANNY
KHALASTCHI
_________________________________________________________________________
More Bad News:
Evening Flight to Iowa:
St. Augustus, Pale:
How Bad I Need Attention:
Even-Off:
In The Yeast of Ju-ly
Rising:
Here’s That Breakdown You Wanted:
Prolly Get More:
_________________________________________________________________________
What
strikes me most in Danny Khalastchi's poetry is its
remarkable musicality; everything in the work seems to insist on, and be the result
of, powerfully felt rhythms. That gives these poems a forcefulness and
determination beyond logical argument. Instead we are brought into a
reasoning that originates in the body's need for release and containment, for
joy and the acknowledgement of its own demise. It don't
mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, wrote Duke
Ellington. This rare musical intensity can sometimes lead to
distortion in phrase formation and sentence structure as it does in Hopkins and
Cummings and these moments always signal great, emotive stress both in terms of
content and form. They
suggest something beyond the limits of language, a wild humility, a willingness
to risk ruin. Danny Khalastchi's poems
seek resolutions, in the world and in the personal, that may in fact be
impossible but are nonetheless, and perhaps because of
that very impossibility, worthy, noble and beautiful.
--Dean Young
_________________________________________________________________________
MORE BAD NEWS:
A phone call from
the insurance man
says our stunt went
terribly wrong;
the fire took the
field, the field
took the barn, the
barn took the horses
and the horses found
the guns. Men came
with water. The
neighbors brought
blankets. People
covered our good-loss
gallery and
tags were made
for the things that died in fashion.
Along with the animals
I'm told the possibility
banners we were making
got pretty hot and
gave into the heat.
They didn't make it out
(nothing
did) but
for what it's worth
we're covered. So
the barn's gone.
So the framing
fell over and so
we have a death
toll. At least
we have pictures;
the ones of me
building, the ones of you
building, the ones of us
knotting the ground noose
and the one of it working.
Somewhere
far from that field now
I see smoke haul up
and bridge a deck
pulled gently to the stars.
With a jar
I try to catch you.
EVENING FLIGHT TO
The blocks of burning
offices are being out
put by the glare of a
blue-lit call light
now reflecting in my
window. Soon
we all will shake;
seatbelts will
fasten, eyes will
close, the plastic
masks will fall unfold
and I won’t get
my peanuts.
Until then,
the scene is oddly
even. Two children
near the restrooms
are crying over juice.
As for us: little cups mean little
since you’ve left me for the city,
and for that I’m only hoping
that I find a girl who moans.
ST. AUGUSTUS, PALE:
There are so many
black birds
crate-raked in those
branches they
look as
still holds of a
well picked through
banana tree where
the tops were
too high to reach
or
the reachers got lazy and
the fruit there
at the top just
went dark and
looked had.
Outside the
St. Augustus Church of
Welcomed Service these
banana birds
till themselves in
buckets of
kicked light chorused from
a sign that gives
day tables for the
times of
able move-forwardness with
tone wax letters that
when looked at quickly (as
when driving
at night
across the reek home
of your got city) come
real close to
spelling out
“east
end free
cat home with lord” or
something more
clever but
along those lines that
I couldn’t think of
now
because I’m
tired and
stone raft
sinking. People
say that
bananas go bad when
taken from the bunch. My
father was
taken from his bunch and
went bad but
raised good kids.
I happen to think those birds
looked pretty.
I happen to think my town’s
collapsing.
HOW BAD I NEED ATTENTION:
To command such apprehension
provides a separation
from the parts--
arches hold better
because they mean their
bend, and
as the fields
celebrate their
sun-setting
drain,
all the browns
remind the pilgrimers
the motion won’t
sell off. This
business of
containing must
leave the loading left
to
be filled up or
passed by like
the destitution
caps of commerce
huffing up the
hill of things
on a mill belt
not progressing.
It could be taken
hardly
that our growth depends
great
on who set up the rows.
The end result relies on
placement.
On the
land between what’s buried and
where the water can
come down.
It relies on being
grounded.
Although it’s just September, they’ve
put the
pumpkins up for sale. Now
I admit I need attention, but
holding
something so orange
against my
too night carried frame
in public is
much too glam
even for a
man like me.
I don’t go near the
things.
I stay pretty and
I stay back
containing. When trying sincere
women tell me
they prefer
another’s company,
I think about
planting.
If I could
harvest now these heel crowns
I’d
finally maybe lean for patience.
As is,
I staple large performance
to the
poles around the city,
call
observance to the
cabbage
I’ve behaved,
and
leave my address there,
for real,
along the streets in
laundered lines.
When people wear
hats with such large brims
I can’t get rightly
close.
I went to
the clinic so someone there
would touch me.
Everyone’s
wearing hats.
EVEN-OFF:
A sad man with
long kept hair
stands on the
southern median
at the intersection
of HWY 6 and
Rocky Shore Drive
in Iowa City
as he does most
afternoons
holding a torn side
of a Sharpp Microwave
box over which
is written
‘for family’
with a black marker
or black paint
or dark eyeliner pencils
he found outside the
Walgreens
down the strip,
I can’t tell.
He doesn’t make
eye-contact with
any of the drivers
and that’s how they
seem to like it.
They stare at the lights.
They play with their stereo
knobs. They look at
their cell-phones
and so do I.
For well over
six months
I’ve seen this man and his
sign not looking at the
people not looking
at him on the same
small rake of broomed-out
weeded concrete
and I’ve thought about
work ethic and my inexperience
with hardship.
Across the street
a man loads bagged soil
into his sedan while his
wife tips the stock boy.
It’d take a lot of effort
not to go west from here.
Every bloomin’ thing.
Every bloomin’ thing.
IN THE
YEAST OF JU-LY RISING:
Left over after a solid
attempt,
a small milk box of quarters
was used to distract a photo salesman
en-route to me walking off
with his labeled baggie
of accelerated constellations.
In low light
the bag high pockets peek-hot sight; quick
but locateable.
Straight in an understanding
that a better place to keep
such heavy campaigns of spacial youth
would be in the phoned stuffing
of a bird to be displayed,
I go home
and elect to leave it for the stand--
in a drawer,
somewhere on the side
above my notated feed march,
next to the cards I’ve made
to hand out to the friends of my still
grandmother
when they play mahjongg
in the possible afternoons.
While the ladies mix about
the tiles
I’ve got this plan to place
the cards
in their bags
by the door
or underneath their drinks.
The cards are pretty
simple. They
say that I’m Jewish. That
I’ve graduated from two major
Universities. And that
I’ve recently
become single. They have a
phone number
and the profession of my parents.
They say
I’m interested in children.
On the back of a few of the
cards
I’ll write that I’m
delivered. I’ll say
I’m oriented but I won’t say
that I’m a poet. Instead,
I’ll note that I provide
things and that
I’ve plainly come to hold
a bag of conciliating stars.
It’s an attempt to build
worth:
big fields grown
through the yeast of
Ju-ly rising;
small sold revvings
of the royal story
stalled.
Ladies, really
I’m good
real good
giraffe.
Tall
goals. Long neck.
If
someone could just reach up.
HERE’S THAT BREAK-
DOWN YOU WANTED:
Now it is night
in a city I am leaving.
The townsmen aren’t
crying. The buildings
aren’t burning.