Cover Art & Design: Jess X Chen, Interior Design: Alban Fischer
Paperback, 38 pages, 5.5” X 7”
November 2015, ISBN 978-1-936919-34-5
About Fatimah Asghar
Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, photographer and performer. She created Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first Spoken Word Poetry group, REFLEKS, while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-violent contexts. She has performed on many stages, including the Dodge Poetry Festival, The Nantucket Project, and TedX. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, The Paris-American, The Margins, and Gulf Coast. She has received fellowships and residencies from Kundiman, Millay Colony, VONA, New Harmony Writers Workshop and Fulbright. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is a Teaching Artist for Young Chicago Authors.
After by Fatimah Asghar
Playroom
i never had enough kens
so i made my barbies fuck
each other or fuck beanie babies.
i never had more than one beanie baby
per species. they were rarer
that way & like some ass backwards
noah’s ark, it kept them from multiplying.
no one with skin like theirs, freaks
like me. lucky the barbies needed their bodies.
in my playroom, the only place
i could be white, whole cities
of beautiful women with boundless tits
fucking loose sacks of animal
their plastic legs thrusting
& thrusting until the beanie
said yes, until it punctured
balls of beans spilling
to the floor. the ladies fucked
their corpses until my aunt
made me throw them out.
the legions of identical
white women, skin glowing
like pearly milk, magnificent
as they stormed the gates
of the zoo, conquering
each animal one limb at a time.About After
First Runner-Up, Eric Hoffer Chapbook Award, 2016
Finalist, First Horizon Award, 2016
An exploration of love, loss and body, After tells the story of a young South Asian woman birthed into America. Weaving magic realism and formal experimentation, Asghar rewinds through a hectic journey filled with abuse and unbelonging. Mythical creatures, strange settings, and disjointed memories combine to chronicle the journey of a woman who learns her body through the eyes and hands of others, before defining it for herself.
Fatimah Asghar isn’t messing around. Her poems swell thick with blood and honor and shameless sensuality, pulling the reader down into the rapid marrow of hunger and grief and feral love, demanding we do whatever the fuck we must to belong to our bodies and god them eternal.
—Rachel McKibbens, Pink Elephant
Reviews & Interviews
Review by Katherine Frain at The Blueshift Journal
Fatimah Asghar on PBS News Hour
Interview in Bitch Media on Survival, Language, and Diaspora
Interview in The Adroit Journal
Interview in Prairie Schooner
