Story of Your Obstinate Survival

Daniel Khalastchi is an Iraqi Jewish American, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is the author of three previous books of poetry—Manoleria, Tradition, and American Parables (winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, The Believer Logger, Colorado Review, Granta, TheIowa Review, the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade, and Best American Experimental Writing. He currently lives in Iowa City, where he directs the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Writing. He is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press.

• BRIEF EXPERIMENT WITH EXPOSITIONRepresentational Invention to Mask More Serious Emotional ConcernsELEVEN INCITING INCIDENTSConfounding Attempts to Explain the MysteryAmong Us a StomachAs YetYou Left Addressing Headlights Spent in Actual TrapezeDear :I Want to Be a Better Friend, I’m SorryWe Must Be Solidly IndemnifiedThe Hysterical LikenessRefrigerator HumBitter and Bitten and There Is Nothing to SeeIn Tennessee You Tell Me We Are Approximately SeasonalGirls Running in the SpringRISING ACTION AS COLLECTIVE MYTHYouth, and Other Misguided Diagnoses of a Failed RelationshipAll of Me Is Elegy, a House Pronounced as SoldDead Tree in StairwellOn Viewing a Sympathetic Nazi Perseverance TableauFaring Poorly in WaterTurndown ServiceDear :I Want to Be a Better Friend, I’m SorryGutter and BrainI Sleep the Sleep of HoneymoonersKeeping Peace in PortugalAnything Could Be Back ThereOur Pregnant Racial ObesityWithering FrameThirteen Hundred Miles from Our Mortgage We Are RunningFor You on Your BirthdayNINE ADDITIONAL COMPLICATIONSVariations on a Large Historical OversightA Body Book-Reviewed as Clinical, the Constituents DebateLava by StaircaseThe Imminent Decline of Everything We’ve Understood to Be What Governs Our Privileged Daily LivesDear :I Want to Be a Better Friend, I’m SorryWhat CheerA Contagious AgeIt’s Been Evening All Day LongThe Sea it Rises Steadily and Suddenly ArrivesTOWARD A HIGH POINT, or ALL DOWNHILLYear-End Reconciliation AdjustmentDear :I Want to Be a Better Friend, I’m SorryOh, I Think About the DeadWe Ought Not Want to See This but Can’t Really Look AwayBecause the NightA Formidable Plan to Address the National ConventionDance Party for the End of the WorldAn Inevitable RescueTrying to I Can’t Hit Anything Yet the Bodies Pile UpOutside the House You SummarizeRelatively Direct Letter of ResignationA Stain on All Our HousesPostcard in DrawerDayenuRESOLUTIONMore Bad NewsNotesAcknowledgments

“Like a new angel of history, The Story of Your Obstinate Survival arrives with its wings heavy with live fish and doorknobs, shovels and bone cake, faith and desire. Khalastchi has turned the poem into a long, beautiful wail, soft and brilliant enough for even Babel and Kafka and Singer to hear. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out Khalastchi feeds each poem by hand, and brushes nightly their wings. With as much abandon as with hope, these poems sway on the edge of a miracle.”—Sabrina Orah Mark