Poetry. "What we are given in the poems that make up After is nothing short of sorcery—the intimate (witch)craft Fatimah Asghar uses to lay bare our most human emotions in our most mythical bodies stuns with grace and force. Let us be grateful for a poet so gifted with the ability to remember, re-member, & reimagine life into lyric to show us what living fully is like after loss, after trauma, after healing, after joy, after what comes for us next. This book is for anyone who has survived, anyone who knows what it's like to be low and what it means to rise. After is only the beginning of many volumes of incredible work from one of our most imaginative & honest emerging voices."—Danez Smith "Poems are often called risky. Poems are sometimes called brave. Poems rarely deserve either epithet. The poems in this collection are of that most rare deserving ilk. In AFTER Fatimah Asghar displays for us the complicated polyrhythm that is the human experience. She weaves desire, hurt, devotion, and violation in such a way as to render a reader wide open. Do not be fooled by the softness of care evident in the craft behind each word. These poems, quite simply, go hard."—Nate Marshall