"Deviation on Returns" by Daniel Khalastchi

Daniel Khalastchi | American Parables | University of Wisconsin Press | 2021 | 120 Pages

Deviation on Returns

You purchased a
Spider. A 19

81 red Fiat
Spider that you

bought—brought
home, waxed hot

in the unlofted
soft-rot garage—the same

beige afternoon I
first lost time to the

second past lapse of
my recently bruised crude wisdom

tooth surgery. In
that car you

hid your immigrant
image, unsettled

a check paved deep
in your savings

to add a new crisis
and run off

the gun. Maybe in-
surance ensured my

mouth would be
served, sutured and

gauzed right-white
and pretty—or maybe

you hemorrhaged a weak
year’s pay without asking

your wife to park
the dark wheels heel-pitched

in our driveway, a damage still
damned as you flit toward

retirement. The tires
I tired of deep in that

brief post tooth-loss
sleep tried to hold us well

in the middle of
class. Get away

I said when you
brought to me ice, brought

to me Arabic sliced-rice
prayer. You slept on

the BarcaLounger next
to me on the couch, the

garage, your
car, your 1981 red

Fiat Spider. It was
Passover. When I

opened my mouth
two workless days

later, all of my
friends lived

in gated
communities. I forget

their names—the streets
and the golf clubs, the

power train engine specs
I never could

clutch. Twenty-five
years have shook and

took with them your
colon, your knees, your

need to be
colonized for having left home. Belief

you have said
is the grieving thief pulling damp

leaves from the gutter. Guts
I never had any. You gave up

the car. It lives
with my sister. The

night throws its
sand. We are handled

in airports. The band
in your speakers

speaks coarse of the country
that saved you, divesting

investments still leaving me
thinking you’d

have more to say.

Commissioned by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature’s MusicIC Festival and performed with the Solera Quartet 2019.

From American Parables by Daniel Khalastchi. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

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 books of poetry—Manoleria (Tupelo Press), Tradition (McSweeney’s), and American Parables (University of Wisconsin Press, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Believer Logger, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and Best American Experimental Writing. Daniel has taught advanced writing, literature, and publishing courses at Augustana College, Marquette University, and the University of Iowa, most recently as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives in Iowa City where he directs the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing. He is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press.