Celebrate with us five years of Asterisms where we feature works published online. Congratulations to the following prose writers featured in our anniversary print issue (Un) bound.
“My Big Gay Essay” by Carley Moore
“Androgynous style. The little fuck you shadows of femininity. Deployment and subterfuge. Hiding in plain sight. I’ve long used clothing to confuse myself, to confuse others, to register as unreadable or misplaced.”
“Native Tongue” by Ola Osifo Osaze
“Yet my parents were also very wrong: not knowing my languages is erasure, a symptom and manifestation of white supremacy. It is a continuation of the pillaging the British began in my homeland many years ago, when they named it Nigeria and attempted to subjugate the people, eradicate our cultures, and invisibilize our histories. As much as I possess a mix of English register and language that enables access into various spaces, I long for Yoruba and Edo, the familial ways of speaking for which I lack the words.Today I am an embodiment of myriad tongues.”
“Preferences” by Amina Gautier
“Mikhail has no television. Planks of wood balanced on cinder blocks serve as bookshelves. There are more books than shelves to hold them. Books are stacked haphazardly atop each other, splayed open. More than a few are upside down. His many books are haggard with wear and tear. Even from her seat on the floor, she can see the violence that’s been done to them. She thought a grad student would have been gentler.”
“Bamboo Wedding” by Sujatha Fernandes
“After Devika left the apartment, Somwattie stopped for a moment to savor the stillness. She was accustomed to having the apartments to herself while she cleaned. It was so different to the noise and chaos of the factories where she had worked in Guyana. Clocking on. Clocking off. Sitting all day in an assembly line sticking labels on containers. Supervisors breathing down your neck telling you to work faster. No time to take bathroom breaks or have a sip of water. Here she was her own boss. No one told her what to do.”
“Autumn Lessons” by F. Marizia Esposito, translated by Jeanne Bonner
“The silence of the empty rooms kills me. I turn on the TV, undress and sit in front of the screen in a t-shirt and my underwear. They’re showing a live image of people in boats and the TV announcers are saying these people want to come to Italy, that in Italy everything is better, there’s work. I’m in the mood for something crunchy. I use one hand to open a packet of crackers, chewing them while I turn on the shower with my other hand. I have all Saturday and half of Sunday free; this is Max’s weekend. I can’t even start looking for work. I think I will just take a lot of showers. A lot of showers.”
“Powderpuff ” by Estella Gonzalez
“You can’t rush this. Nuh uh. That’s why you get up at four in the morning even if you don’t have to be at work until nine because you never know when you might run into one of your old boyfriends or worse, one of those old skanky metiches from high school like that cha-cha girl Sonya. So take your time. Ignore your parents, especially your mother who bangs on the door like she’s gonna crash through it.”
“The Chemist’s Wife” by Em Rose
“A few times, I noticed the same man on the bus – improbable odds, but he was distinctive-looking: a gap-toothed little man who moved swiftly on aluminum crutches. Sometimes our eyes met, and he had fast-moving eyes just like a ticker tape feed, like he was racking numbers inside, taking stock of us all.”
