Big Bad Asterisk Author: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 s... more »tart reading it is impossible not to find yourself tangled in this family. --Susan Yount, author of Catastrophe Theory I'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 Fire Rip 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« less