The Sto­ry of Your Obsti­nate Sur­vival is a bold­ly imag­i­na­tive col­lec­tion of poems set in the apoc­a­lyp­tic present, where faith and faith­less­ness coin­cide in a speak­er ​“eager for belief” who nev­er­the­less wres­tles with the ​“lega­cy of lost belief” and the loos­en­ing of ​“famil­ial oblig­a­tion / in favor of mod­ern growth.” 

Khalastchi’s poem titles are as hard to pin down as the poems them­selves, from ​“The Immi­nent Decline of Every­thing We’ve Under­stood to Be What Gov­erns Our Priv­i­leged Dai­ly Lives,” to ​“A For­mi­da­ble Plan to Address the Nation­al Con­ven­tion.” The lat­ter opens with the speak­er in a South Flori­da gro­cery store, where he is being cross-exam­ined by women who ​“don’t believe // I’ve bought enough to eat”; he soon finds him­self in one of their kitchens, where ​“the range is // elec­tric because gas is how their / par­ents died.” In ​“Oh, I Think About the Dead,” a rab­bi who ​“fell in-/ to a gravesite” has been ​“com­muning” with the dead: ​“Every day / she calls the congregation’s / phone tree and talks of // whose depart­ed she’s gone far with.”

Hilar­i­ous and heart­break­ing, The Sto­ry of Your Obsti­nate Sur­vival is a wit­ty, ten­der tour de force of con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish poetry.