Big Bad Asterisk*

by Carlo Matos

Big Bad Asterisk* is a sequence of prose poems that entangles the reader in a narrative of human oddity and originality. Welcome to the family where the father uses a machete on the hedges, the great uncle is lost hunting trolls, the only way to talk to the grandfather is through the grandmother and the baby’s spoon is a bone. Beware! Once you start reading it is impossible not to find yourself tangled in this family.—Susan Yount, author of Catastrophe TheoryI’m no longer surprised that Carlo Matos spends his free time fighting in cages because his new book of poetry, Big Bad Asterisk* has knocked the wind out of me. Like a kick in the gut, the story, the prose, the way he tells it – a way I’ve never encountered before – hits you hard and the welts stay with you long after you’ve finished. “Nestled among the junk, the porno solicitations, and penis-increasing tonics and creams was a two-week old message … ‘Are you married, yet? If not, come find me.’” And so begins the quest, one that allows us a moment with this uneasy but captivating hero. I can honestly say I’ll never look at an asterisk the same way again.—Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on FireMatos’s asterisked world contains donkeys, size nine-and-a-half women’s shoes, licentious goats, and the reverberating echoes of Nautilus-shell genomes. There are cage fighters, ex-boyfriends with giant penises, and a Yeti-loving heroine . . . it is a dialogic juggernaut of multiple intelligences, an asterisk map of a young boy’s monkey pajamas, leading home.—Michael Colson, Portuguese American JournalRip roaring! A brilliant book of aphoristic short poems that capture the unsaid, the footnotes of our thoughts, the sub-text of our days, the everyday secrets of what is revealed by the ever present after-thought, of “the other,” the hidden, the darkest dilemma of what and what not to reveal, to admit to, to wonder about, to spill over into real life, the ironic true voice of that big bad asterisk!—Millicent Borges Accardi, author of Injuring Eternity

120 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Carlo Matos is a bi+ author, who has published 13 books, including As Malcriadas or Names We Inherit (New Meridian Arts) and We Prefer the Damned (Unbound Edition Press). He also co-edited an anthology with Luis Gonçalves titled, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in such journals as RHINO, [PANK], DIAGRAM, and HOBART, among many others. Carlo has received grants and fellowships from Disquiet ILP, CantoMundo, the Illinois Arts Council, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the La Romita School of Art in Italy. He is a winner of the Heartland Poetry Prize and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He currently lives in Chicago, IL, is a professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, and a former MMA fighter and kickboxer. He blogs at carlomatos.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter @CarloMatos46.