We Prefer the Damned

by Carlo Matos

We Prefer the Damned, the 11th book from Carlo Matos, features poems exploring bisexual identity, relationships, erasure, and denial. Matos, equally celebrated for his fiction, poetry, and prose-poetry, pushes toward a new grammar for intersectional identities as the poems in We Prefer the Damned weave his Portuguese-American heritage and bi+ lived experience. Through language turned and punctuated in fresh ways, Matos finds the structures and syntax to embrace past and present, old self and new self. His toughness as a former MMA fighter turns to the finessed strength of rigorous self-examination with these poems. The collection embraces the true complexities of the bi+/pan/poly experience, particularly false accusations of not being Queer enough or, simultaneously, of being too sexual and incapable of monogamy. These poems also trace the boundaries where such issues interact with a working-class, child-of-immigrants upbringing, in which the very words for describing bisexuality did not exist. With We Prefer the Damned, Carlo Matos creates that missing language.

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2021

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.

Reviews

[Humberto da Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished 'We Prefer the Damned' last night with another shot of Johnny on the rocks. It is a brave and complete work. So many of my friends in our culture, in my generation, struggled so hard with their sexuality, and did themselves (and others) irreparable harm in the process. Carlo writes so joyfully and transparently about his sexuality, in the context of culture, religion, and family is a beautiful thing. I Love the references to fighting, and almost fighting, after all that is often an overriding subtext in the language of men. His poem about his grandmother, the "Black sail" is so real for me that i pictured her as my own. Love that Carlo dedicated a poem to Chris Larkosh, and that it is referent to the pop culture stuff that the beloved Professor himself loved. The poetic references to “Who’s The Boss” reminded me about a time when a homophobe sung the chorus to Tiny Dancer in the Elton upper register as: "Hold me closah Tony Danza” because my friend Tony had said he liked the show. It made me smile that Carlo forever took the sting out of that attempt at a slur, aimed at a friend so long ago.

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review

Lyrical, interesting, and delightful to read.

Matos speaks on his experiences as a bi+ Portuguese man through disjointed prose peppered with staccato asides.

My favorite poems are: "Get Into the Groove", "Vertigo", and "Mutter."

[Donnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been wanting to read a book of poetry. This was not the right intro book into poetry for me. It wasn’t bad. It was queer. It was sensual. It was intimate. But not for me as a beginner.