Suspect Press

Category: Poetry

  • Treat Me Like You Treat The Earth

    Treat Me Like You Treat The Earth

    By ElizaBeth Whittington

     

    I want you to stake me
    Claim me
    Stick your drill deep into me
    Horizontally Frack me
    Spew your poisoned water into me
    Spill my deepest lubricant upon me
    Then call me ugly.

    I want you to mine me
    Explode all over me
    Mushroom cloud my head
    With ideas of decency
    Strip me
    Of every
    Native
    Plant, tree and species
    Pave over me
    Then call me pretty.

    I want you to plow me
    Plant me, poison me,
    Mono-culture and enslave me
    Steal my young before they’ve gone to seed…
    Then call me ugly.

    I want you to buy me,
    Sell me,
    Then lease me.
    Fraction me, allocate me,
    Divide and conquer me
    Then call me ugly.

     

     

    ElizaBeth Whittington has been in the Denver poetry scene for the past ten years, frequenting open mics and hosting music and poetry events. They currently host a showcase for local musicians and poets at Park Hill Hub. They self-published a chapbook titled “Poetry for People” in 2015 and are currently editing a poetry manuscript. They’ve been featured at Denver Poets Day, The Podeo, and the annual Erotic Poetry Festival. You can find more of their work at: soothseeker88.wordpress.com
  • Green Sweater

    Green Sweater

    By Charly Fasano

     

    Illustration by Charly Fasano

     

    The girl in the green sweater
    sings along and winks at me.

     She plays air tambourine,
    dances like a robot,
    her hair looks amazing everyday.

     She calls brass knuckles “knucks”
    and whiskey neat a “sipper”.

     When we talk
    we glimpse
    over the rims of pints and shot glasses.
    Gulp on the edge of tumbling to slow the pace of things.
    Nod puckered
    toe tap to the baseline of Cure songs.

     I memorize our rattled chatter.
    Note that she likes when I wear
    my favorite brown shirt with black slacks.

     Make moves without making moves.
    Microbursts of flirts and eye contact.
    Gestures I could have created but controlled.

     Sips on the edge of tumbling
    to slow the pace of things, everything.
    A Memphis kind of
    comfortable,
    cool,
    slow,
    because.

     Music too loud to get close,
    to lean in
    tell her that she looks nice.

    Wish I was
    comfortable.
    cool.
    slow.
    because.

     

     

    Charly Fasano is a poet, performer, filmmaker and block printer, as well as a Westword-voted Colorado Creative. Fasano has read his poems with and shared the stage with bands like Lucero, Drag the River, Crime in Stereo, Madson Jones, Land Lines and The Queers. He is the founder of Fast Geek Press, Pretend You Can Reab audio zine, and As Well As Magazine. Fasano’s poems have appeared in Yellow Rake, Lubricated Magazine, Syntax Magazine, MovingPoems.com and Growing Strange Magazine. His book of poems, Next Analog Broadcast (2011) was published by Sunnyoutside Press, and was followed by a multimedia book and 7 inch called RETROSPECT/ED featuring the music of Lucero, released on Fast Geek Press in 2014.

     

  • Albatross

    Albatross

    By RJ Walker

     

    *For anybody else that has been bullied or abused and considered violence

    OK, so
    Albatross is
    perched
    outside my window
    At all times.
    He has a voice like a schoolboy
    Stop Hitting Yourself
    Stop Hitting Yourself
    Stop Hitting Yourself

    He has a voice like a father.
    Stand Up For Yourself
    Stand Up For Yourself
    Stand Up For Yourself

    He has a voice like an older brother.
    Fight Back
    Fight Back
    Fight back

    My god, he is a republican.
    Stop Being A Victim
    Stop Being A Victim
    Stop Being A Victim

    You’ll stop getting bullied
    when you
    stand up for yourself
    fight back
    stop being a victim
    stop hitting yourself
    stop hitting yourself

    “Ok… Ok…”
    I tell Albatross
    “Here. I want you to have this.”
    And I shoot him through his goddamn guts
    with a crossbow made of my fists.

    I grab Albatross by the heart
    and punch him
    until he resembles a mass of dirty red shirts.
    Until he resembles a bloody mess
    Until he resembles me
    and all the corpse he has made out of me.

                 Not like that!
    Squawks Dead Albatross
                 Not like that!

    Oh, but Albatross.
    I have stopped hitting myself
    and I have started hitting you.

    Oh, but Albatross
    I am standing up for myself
    on top of your neck.

    Oh, but Albatross
    I am fighting back
    see all this blood?
    it ain’t mine this time!

               But you’re still a victim
    Says Dead Albatross

    Oh, but Albatross,
    So are you, now.
    So you will be always.
    And now hell is a place for both of us.

    You have loved making a monster
    out of me, Albatross.
    And so you have earned my teeth.
    You sharpened them yourself, Albatross.

    When the world finds me
    I will have 2 broken hands.
    I will be covered in bloody feathers.
    They will see the dead Albatross
    and despair
    “what have you done?
    Why have you killed
    such a beautiful bird?
    Only a monster would do such a thing.”

    And they are right.

    And they will crucify Dead Albatross
    to my collarbone and shoulders.
    I carry Albatross everywhere I go
    A tattoo of a dead friend.
    Heavy as the ocean
    And all the things it has swallowed.
    Albatross has become part of myself now
    and I can’t stop hitting myself.

     

     

    RJ Walker is a spoken word artist from Salt Lake City. He is the host of SLC’s longest running open mic event at The Greenhouse Effect and operates Salt City Slam. His work has been featured on Button Poetry, Write About Now, and Voicemail Poems. He lives a half-life, a cursed life, a good life with three cats.
  • for national poetry month, i

    for national poetry month, i

    By Harper Russet

     

    unwrapped another rejection email
    from another magazine, then
    unwrapped the poems trying
    to find the disease
    that made them glow radioactive
    in the eyes of poets
    better than me;
    couldn’t find it, only
    saw a hurt i’d worked so hard on
    and a hurt i didn’t have to try for
    at all, just came naturally,
    and i think maybe i sent the wrong hurts
    to the southern indiana review.
    maybe i left the poems about trees
    and clouds
    and airplanes
    and all that good and dry shit,
    that shit real literaries love,
    that shit that don’t scare no one –
    i left it on the table
    and mailed the bodies
    of every bad day i’d ever had,
    dressed them up in my baby clothes,
    and let them wail
    right into the editor’s ear:

     please, don’t print this.
    please, don’t let anyone look at me.

     

     

    Harper Russet is a 24-year-old butch poet and novelist from Utah. Everything she writes is an argument with God.
  • For Water Women (the Black bodies that find the river)

    For Water Women (the Black bodies that find the river)

    By Alyesha Wise

     

    Today,
    My good friend posts her pre-chemo picture online.
    Today, she is a head full of hair, a text thread of ‘I got you sis’ emojis.
    Tomorrow, I imagine her a golden mermaid with a broken tail.
    I am tad bit afraid to drown, but I am unafraid to dive in for…

    Today, the body of a Black female Muslim judge
    is found floating in the Hudson river.

    Today, my friend’s pre-chemo picture is still online.
    She says it’s leukemia, or she says it’s lupus.

    No. Today, two     of my friends slip on hospital gowns on opposite coasts –
    Black warrior women
    in white garb
    always extend our wrists and draw blood.

    Today, no talk about the missing girls anymore.

    Today, Sheila Abdus-Salaam’s dead carcass is pulled out of the Hudson River.
    I am a tad bit afraid to drown, but I am unafraid to dive in for a dark woman.
                              Did no one see her flood before the water did?

              Today, I’ll wash my clothes.
              Today, I’ll do my taxes.

    Today, I contemplate therapy, or scheduling a doctor’s appointment.
    I contemplate             how this will is birthed out of the wilting.
    I contemplate             how I still don’t trust white america with our bodies.

    I think myself an empath
    then ask             Is this just me naming a Black woman who is able to fix everything more than she is able to to fix herself?

    Today, all apologies cease for appropriating our lives.

    Today,
    Do you want to appropriate the dying parts, too?
    Do you wish to wrap yourself in our tears and our cunts, fuck & discard of both?

    Yesterday,
    I logged off.
    Today, I am hesitant to log on.
    I am trying not to do that thing the white world does –
    turn a blind eye so I can pretend it is not happening.

    Yesterday, I logged off.
    Today, I realize we are always logged on.

    We are always this tired. We are always this want.
    We are always this unaccounted for.
    We are always this urgency to put our own life mask on first.
    But, sometimes, you may find us on the bank of the Hudson
    or in a hospital bed with our arms outstretched.
    And I know       better              than to claim an ill thing,
    but I am trying not to do what the white world does –
    turn a blind eye. I can’t pretend we do not feel it.

                    Today, I cooked a great dinner.
                    cleaned my house.
                    planned a workshop for a class of mine.
                    prepared a healing circle in my living room.
                    chanted for the broken.
                    even the white ones.
                    the stubborn Black magic I am.
                    I wonder,
                    if God gets this tired, too.
                    or if They’re just choosing to anoint Their likeness this way –
                    the dark beings in holy garb, blessing the river.
                    the ones very few see drowning, until we do.

     

     

    Alyesha Wise is a poet, teaching artist & TEDx speaker from Camden, N.J. who currently resides in Los Angeles. She is the author of Carnival (not a cult media).
  • Body Loves to Gamble

    Body Loves to Gamble

    By Ayla Sullivan

     

    body makes wager with mirror
    “if I’m not afraid of you by the end of the day, I’ll stop hiding you behind love notes the Internet said would help”
    body is groaning
    stomach, tight lipped around a secret
    the old secret
    he has forgotten what breakfast is, what dinner is
    starts calling the stranger spending the night “meal”
    doesn’t notice how often the stranger is gone
    or if it stays, even

    hips shrink
    ass stays silent
    shoulders do what they were taught, bend

    body makes wager with men
    “if you don’t fuck with me, i won’t fuck with you”
    body loses
    daily
    keeps track of eyes and comments just enough to not start a lawsuit, but eventually support one
    catalogues the calling, the touching, the yelling, the following
    body keeps losing

    body makes wager with night
    “If you protect me once, I’ll never ask again.”
    body keeps asking anyway
    knows faith is the only thing that can protect us
    knows it is dying every night or in broad daylight just in different bodies
    body knows this version ain’t on a list yet, far enough from it to still be scared but not ready
    knows that staying here, without transition, makes it easier to avoid beatings

    body makes a wager with you
    “if you can go years without asking for evidence it happened and believe me, maybe I’ll stop telling you. I’ll stop writing. I’ll stop filming. I’ll stop screaming. I’ll stop begging. I’ll stop. I’ll stop. Stop. Stop. Please.”
    body forgets how to say stop
    body don’t know how to say no
    body is winning the bet
    body tired of you seeing the signs, seeing the facebook live videos, the dash cam, the hearings, the recordings, the wrong place/wrong time, the hands, the blood, the gun, the blood, the fight, the cut, the blood, the blood, the death, the young, the dead young, the blood, the child, the gun, the mother, the blood, the blood

    body asks
    “aren’t you tired of losing? I am.”

     

     

    Ayla Sullivan is the Denver Youth Poet Laureate and proud lifelong resident of Denver. They are studying Theatre and Secondary English Education at CU Boulder, where this summer they are in the acting company for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
  • Fingertips

    Fingertips

    By Charly Fasano

    Illustration by Charly Fasano

     

    Going to get to know himself better
    by studying his fingerprints.
    Wondering what got him here in the third place.
    Going to get caught up in places
    most people go to unwind.
    Out of all the times he’s died
    this one hurts the most.

    Partly cloudy
    There’s cages hanging from cranes building New Denver.
    He picked a pretty good day to start huffing markers.
    He sits on a cooler drinking can beer in a parking lot overlooking a parking lot,
    with a cheap view of a country club.
    Golfers graze children in the heavy rough
    while they drink brunch down the fairway.
    He’ll never figure out if it’s members only to play
    or members only to watch.

    He thinks of himself as a prophetic epileptic
    all the waking ghost rides
    tasting smells with a numb tongue
    almost enjoys when tingles creep prepositional.

    Startled asleep
    still living
    still partly cloudy but bright enough to wear sunglasses
    the kind of day when he has to choose
    between buying toilet paper and eating his cat.

    A waffle and a cup of coffee hold hands and skip across a diner window.
    Slow suicide sits in a booth sipping decaf
    staring at a glass of whole milk
    bacon
    the cash register
    a preacher’s wife
    a chain smoker

    any and every

    things he can’t have.
    Studying his fingertips
    Trying to figure out what got him here in the first place.

     

     

    Charly Fasano is a poet, performer, filmmaker and block printer, as well as a Westword-voted Colorado Creative. Fasano has read his poems with and shared the stage with bands like Lucero, Drag the River, Crime in Stereo, Madson Jones, Land Lines and The Queers. He is the founder of Fast Geek Press, Pretend You Can Reab audio zine, and As Well As Magazine. Fasano’s poems have appeared in Yellow Rake, Lubricated Magazine, Syntax Magazine, MovingPoems.com and Growing Strange Magazine. His book of poems, Next Analog Broadcast (2011) was published by Sunnyoutside Press, and was followed by a multimedia book and 7 inch called RETROSPECT/ED featuring the music of Lucero, released on Fast Geek Press in 2014.

     

  • Doors

    Doors

    By Jesse Parent

     

    My daughter tells me she wants to date
    and I shrug.
    She tells me the name of her girlfriend
    and I shrug again.
    She tells me I have to be careful
    because her girlfriend’s parents don’t know she’s gay.
    And I pause.

     My daughter tells me her parents are religious
    and I want to tell her “so am I” and “that shouldn’t matter”
    But I can’t deny that while religion doesn’t build the closet door
    it does tend to supply the lumber.
    To plane it straight.
    After all, Jesus was a carpenter’s son
    and knows the many uses of wood.
    How to hang plumb.

     And here I reach the point of parental dilemma
    I am at the crossroad where
    I need to be honest with this girl’s parents
    and where she needs to survive.
    My daughter praying to crossed timber
    on an atheist’s rosary that the door
    will open and her girlfriend will be
    where she last saw her,
    alive and well hidden under a heap of clothes
    that her parents bought for her.

     I live a thousand lifetimes in this decade of Hail Marys
    where my daughter does not go to prom
    because her girlfriend has to go with a boy
    where she is called an “aunt” or “special friend”
    where she is pulled inside the door of someone else’s closet.
    Applies another coat of varnish and lacquer
    until she blurs a little more every day.

     And when I meet the parents,
    I smile like a stack of toothpicks,
    choose her survival over truth,
    shake their hands and feel for splinters and callouses.
    But I say a silent prayer, a vow,
    to put every door in my own home into a wood chipper
    until my daughter feels safe
    until she falls in love with the smell of sawdust.

     

     

    Jesse Parent placed 2nd at both the 2010 and 2011 Individual World Poetry Slams and has served on the executive council for Poetry Slam, Inc. His poetry has been featured on Huffington Post, UpWorthy, TheBlaze.com, and WorldStarHipHop.com. In his personal life, he has a very tolerant wife and three adorable kids. You can find out more about him at www.JesseParent.com.
  • Dear, Wakanda

    Dear, Wakanda

    By Theo “Lucifury” Wilson

     

    This poem is entitled, “Why I’m naming my daughter Wakanda.”
    Or, “Is it possible to have a vibranium boner? Thank you Lupita N’Yongo!”
    Or, “Dear T’Challa, you’re more of a hero than you know,

    Signed…Chi-Raq.”

    When is a story more than a story?
    Answer: when the story itself is a super-suit.
    Put it on and defy gravity in the holodeck of heart.
    To those wonder why a mere movie trailer made black folks act crazy.
    Consider our stories thus far.

    Consider the war on drugs felon reading Marvel Comics in his cell.
    Consider Angela Davis and Assata Shakur the real-life Dora Milaje.
    Lady warriors who faced the beast with so much cat-like ferocity
    They forgot about their reflex to flinch.

    Did Huey P. Newton dream of the waterfalls and the Cat-God
    Serving time, as the world chanted his slave-name to set him free?

    The courage it took to fight the power without a bulletproof suit
    Lets you know he’d be a hell of an Avenger.

    All black student history saw the drawings of Wakanda, and wondered

    “Is this what we would have been?

    Had Africa been cursed with vibranium instead of diamonds?
    Had plunder not reset the clock on our advancement?
    Had Stan Lee been God and not the dude on the cross,
    Could I apply for dual citizenship in Wakanda?”

    If Zimmerman pulled down the hoodie, and revealed T’Challa,
    A mighty round-house kick launching him through the rainy night,
    Slashing the pistol into pieces with one slice of his claws,
    Would the courts rule that “Panthers” could again be on neighborhood watch?

    Maybe then, I could fight with stronger weapons than a hashtag.

    Would Wakanda offer amnesty to refugees of the drug war,
    And bail out nonviolent offenders from mass incarceration?

    Would they send water engineers for Flint, Michigan’s pipes?
    Or would they be stopped in customs by Trump’s travel ban?
    Would The Panther issue trade sanctions on precious metals
    Until they freed Mumia,
    Or would he funnel supplies to protestors in Ferguson?

    It’s kind of weird how bad we want this place to be real…but, not…

    Not when I rehearse my speech to the cops in the mirror like a monologue.
    Hoping if I’m as good as Chadwick Boseman, I can win a trip home like an Oscar.

    So, until I live in the Marvel Universe…I’m naming my daughter, “Wakanda.”
    And she’s gonna be a badass
    A kung fu master, computer-hacking toddler
    With a sidekick she will know as, “daddy.”

    And, she’ll be as pretty as Angela Bassett and nice with the nunchucks.

    As I wait for life to imitate art.  

     

     

    Theo “Lucifury” Wilson is a poet and performer from Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. He’s a US National Poetry Slam Champion and member of multiple Slam teams, as well as the founder of Barbershop Talk. He’s also the grandson of a Tuskegee Airman.
  • Ethnic Studies by Toluwanimi Obiwole

    Ethnic Studies by Toluwanimi Obiwole

    I’ve been staring down a long hard historical fact for two years now

    maybe my whole life

    That putting the stories of my people in a bound leather dissertation

    Will either pasteurize it

    Or get me in trouble

    Depending on how much truth I tell

    The first ethnographers arranged indigenous people like dolls

    In front of a narrative

    That would snake around their throats

    And choke the oral tradition from their lips

    We called grandfather’s stories history

    English translated them into myth

    I came to snatch them back

    Under the midnight glow of library fluorescent lighting

    I relearned what the ancestors died discovering

    That if you are too loud

    Too brown

    Insisting upon the right to your own breath

    They might just take it from you

    Or swallow you up in an institutional lie

    But what will they say

    Now that I have torn up every story about me or my people that isn’t true

    Now that I have taken their blue passport and made a bridge with it

    Now that I am delicately crafting self love into a quantifiable form of healing

    Rediscovered grandfather’s stories

    And how to tell them so loud

    So brown

    So insistent upon my own necessity

    Most days the university will call me idealistic

    Cause learning your own history will not make you millions

    But detangling history with voices as coarse and

    thick with struggling as your own

    With the reverb of emiliano zapata marching to fela’s drum

    Sure sounds like the end of capitalism

    The beginning of reparations

    And isn’t that the most expensive thing?

    Holding the key to your own freedom

    Collecting sovereignty back from the pioneers and conquistadors

    that still live

    All of you who have survived classes where historical atrocities are the only available histories about a people like yours

    Can now rewrite the textbooks

    Fill in lost syllables and accents

    To tell a more complete narrative on survival

    On revitalization

    On the joy that exists and must be remembered

    In every indigenous song and story

    Joy like a rock through

    neocolonialism

    neo-imperialism

    And every other ism

    That fashions its mouth against me

    I have always had a voice

    But now this $60,000 piece of cardstock will amplify it

    My feet, blackened on the road to revolution

    Now have offices and neighborhoods to go to

    But wherever I

    Wherever we

    End up

    Let us rework the spaces we are in

    Pull out the hard truths from our back pockets when necessary

    And always

    be unapologetically

    Free

  • Of all the things you regret, don’t let this be one…

    Of all the things you regret, don’t let this be one…

    By Will Boyd

     

    *This poem was created with subject lines from real spam emails. As much as possible, the lines have not been altered in any way.

     

    Of all the things you regret, don’t let this be one..
    Give happiness to your beloved one
    Simple steps to become ideal this night

    Can you have more and more joy?
    Don’t Live in Fear of Loud Noises
    She wants you to be stronger

    Of all the things you regret, don’t let this be one..
    The waste ground to the back of the centre provides ample space for expansion
    BE CAREFUL OF CHEAP IMITATIONS

    Do you know who I am
    Can you handle this?
    for a agreeable stranger

    Of all the things you regret, don’t let this be one…
    this Spring will be the last lonely spring for us
    You are able to set her free

     

     

    Will Boyd is a Denver transplant by way of Tennessee. Though he works in the world of email marketing, he’s happiest writing fiction, playing guitar, and building his dream—a geographical and time-based database of blues music.
  • The Blizzard

    The Blizzard

    By Elijah

     

    The sound of spit.
    Sandy sucks her tight
    teeth, tastes metal.

    They sell crystal-meth in the trailer
    next door. Before ‘Trapper’ was
    colloquial for drug-dealer, at least
    to the white-people who lived here,
    it was just the neighbor’s name.
    Trapper was Sandy’s uncle.

    A blizzard

    left the trailer-park powerless.
    It was spring break. Bad timing.
    Too soon for an excuse to miss school.
    Snow stood taller than the children.

    Sandy

    was the only living girl who lived there.
    When she moved in, the boys followed
    her. She was the first person they ever
    wanted to fuck.

    Trapper’s

    truck could plow through the snow.
    He drove Clay and his clever father
    to get groceries. Perishables were left
    outside because it was cold enough
    and the trailer-park had no

    power

    for fridges. Ceilings were collapsing.
    Clay’s brother was the oldest, strongest
    boy. He climbed trailers with a shovel,
    making a killing! 20! 30! 40! dollars per-
    roof! Trapper gave him 200! a type of

    money

    these kids had ever held. He was nothing
    like the criminals on TV. The boys thought
    him a nice man, fat, bald, greasy-black hair
    sprouting from the sides of his

    fucking

    head. He was also her step-dad too. Her little sister
    lived there too, but nobody wanted to fuck her.
    He beat the shit out of them like his own daughters.
    The boys were oblivious. Clay’s father called

    the police.

    How embarrassing! Years after the park
    was demolished, Clay worked at the mall.
    He barely recognized Trapper in the
    phone-store—skinny, missing teeth.