Youssef Alaoui-Fdili is an Arab-Latino, born in California. His mother is Colombiana. His father was Moroccan. The Alaoui-Fdilis are originally from Fez. His brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins are today mostly in Casablanca and Rabat. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. There, he studied Classical Arabic, Spanish Baroque and Contemporary Moroccan poetry. He is also well versed in the most dour and macabre literature of the 19th Century. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, 580 Split, Cherry Bleeds, Virgogray Press, Red Fez, Big Bridge, Dusie Press, Paris Lit Up, The Opiate, and nominated for a Pushcart at Full of Crow. Youssef is an original creator of the East Bay literary arts festival "Beast Crawl." In 2012 he created Paper Press Books & Associates Publishing Company. This press offers several important books of poetry and one poetry and art compendium. He currently resides in Oakland & San Luis Obispo, California
Youssef Alaoui’s poems in Critics of Mystery Marvel are the exoskeletons of bullets, of bombs. Be careful, but proceed anyway. The barrage is not for harm, but for diversion: It is hiding a deep pool where lightning gathers in a broken heart, where silver shards of memory rise painful, but sweet in this poet’s voice.
If only my five fingers were dynamite/for when I touched you I discovered/ your heart is a dark and gorgeous mountain… If we meet again/ and if I should hold you /this mountain will shudder and crumble.
Dian Sousa, author of Lullabies for The Spooked and Cool and The Marvels Recorded in My Private Closet
“The Maghrebi artist is naturally surreal, as Algerian poet Habib Tengour says, and thus also “always elsewhere. And that is where he fulfills himself.” As Youssef Alaoui does here, creating a poetry that uses his surrealist Maghrebi gaze to poke holes & illuminate the basic American Reel — & vice-versa. Fez shimmers in the Bay Area, and the Bay Area is a Fazi’s Fata Morgana. But you can touch it all, because it lives in the solid everyday real of these poems.”
Pierre Joris, author of Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012 (2014)
“I have been following this wonderful poet-magician for a long time and have always admired how he continues to cross boundaries. In this new collection we’re taken on a tour of a complex and delightful mind.”
Neeli Cherkovski, author of Elegy For My Beat Generation (2018)
CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL is Youssef Alaoui’s first poetry collection, which explores human relationships between individuals, cultures, races, and genders. Alaoui deftly utilizes archaic tones to formulate an artistic approach to metaphor, creating images that appear wholly in the mind and not on the page. This volume consists of ten sections that explore Alaoui’s family and heritage; an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings, blending surrealism, magical realism, and language alchemy as he explores the human mythos of love, gender, poverty, politics, racism, and war. A few of the poems are written in French and Spanish, translated to English. Post-beat verse from the San Francisco Bay area and the Big Sur, CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL touches the depth of the soul with poetry that is metaphorically luminous!
Youssef Alaoui’s short-story collection, Fiercer Monsters, is concerned with the symbology of letters and the word as invocation, contrasted with the futility of language. In these stories, Alaoui presents a Neanderthal oracle, a little girl in Venezuela in the 1950s, a 19th-century hallucinating sailor, and a WWI soldier. The voices are sometimes salty, always salient. Each voice ultimately laments the fall of the tower of Babel and the resulting confusion.
How the Sword Maiden Did Love A Young Man
Did you only see me as a body to satisfy your hunger
when you pulled me from the ocean, you knew I was far from home
swimming unprotected, in Morocco we never say
I have eaten enough today, please take my food
I have seen enough today, please take my freedom
I have lived enough today, please take my life
As I slid from the water to fill your cracked hands
I fought you like any maiden would, yes she would
tell you to go suck on a rotten rag, you maudlin child
you had no dexterity when first you held me, nor the last
little did we know we would spend the rest of our lives together
You brought your shiny treasure to the souk that morning
so proud to be seen with me, I was the beacon of your booth
they came and looked, you lost a button your chest was so big
no one minded my nose or how still I lay, dressing the ice
between lesser creatures, no one minded until the police noticed
They watched as we chatted and sold a few things
sitting around me and I saw, but said nothing
until they called the truck to drive through the stands
it followed them like a clanking impersonal storm cloud
I wondered what the driver had eaten that morning
certainly not me, certainly not you, ah but that truck
Would be eating more than its share soon
I called you in my language but you couldn’t hear
as police asked you questions, people backed away
then earnest cries and tears began, I saw this too
before I was heaved into the truck with layers of garbage
I called and cried, you flew in head first
to help me, holding me in your arms, I stared into your neck
your pulse stopped as we hugged, the gears forced us closer
on the day we met, we became one loving body forever united
we had seen enough, eaten enough, lived enough together
Who could think we would ever say this, but we did
and the crowds could not believe it either
they too were crushed in the rubbish, rallied for days
forced together by the gears of governance, eyes full of pepper spray
everyone tearful, swimming the wishes of a fishmonger
May the skies one day ring with gold coins
forever turning, never falling, never dying