Jahan Khajavi's poem "Bagatelle" has been paired with Jeremy Scott's 2011 form-fitting 'meat' dress crafted from pink and white marbled latex. Eroticized and gluttonous, this poem (which feels reminiscent of classic Italian ottava rima) is a tongue-in-cheek meditation on gorging and excess. For many, camp has been understood as protean, but in this case it's also protein. In "The Spectacles of Camp," Fabio Cleto reminds us: "As a witty form of wordplay, camp partakes in the twofold, shifting, playful nature of puns [...] and metaphors, that is, symbolic constructs standing for something else, evoking a symbolic elsewhere." Of Lady Gaga's 'real' meat dress, Scott has said: "Hers is more of a barbarian style, mine's a little bit more of a chic, Marilyn Monroe style."
— Paul Cunningham, Editor
Bagatelle
Say, which appendage - not of gold, but meat
to have & hold - is nothing more than knuckle -
tasty tidbit, not unlike a teat
that one can fondly fondle, if not suckle
as if honey - opposite the huckle-
berry fig - do I, 'til every button
on my blouse & jeans begin to buckle,
gorge on like a pig on legs of mutton?
I'm thankful for a shank, but for the fore a glutton!
Jahan Khajavi (Fresno, 1986) is "the best kind of pervert" (Farid Matuk) who composes "wildly amusing and explicit queer poetry" (Hamish Bowles, Vogue) "with elements of swagger and sex" (Rob McLennan) that "luxuriates in the labor of the real" (PJ Lombardo, Tripwire) and "juggles truly absurd comedy and frank body talk with overwhelming tenderness and genuine corporeal joy" (Louis Fratino, Mousse). Khajavi’s "fabulous, fierce first collection" (Moira Egan) Feast of the Ass (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023), is "one of the most unique books of recent memory" (Johannes Göransson), which "at once flourishes and makes a flourish of classical Persian forms" (Joyelle McSweeney) "in which the sacred and profane fuck on the page" (After 8 Books) & "saturated lines cluster and cloister together detail’s sound and vision" (Alicia Wright, Annulet) in "an explosion of queer diasporic sexuality" (Hasti) "fragrant of jasmine and trace fecal matter" (Charlie Stuip, Grotto).
