Suspect Press

Tag: Charly Fasano

  • Whole Ball of Whoops

    Whole Ball of Whoops

    By Charly Fasano

    Sorry I shit your pants.

    You look pale

    let me buy you a tan.

    I want to pretend none of this happened.

    I have two bus stops to teach myself string theory

    with a grocery list and a golf pencil.

    How to fold this moment as

    mistakes fold in on me.

    How to punish the person

    who built the jail.

    The people I thought

    deserved an apology

    don’t even remember me.

    But still

    with as much eye contact

    I can muster

    Sorry I shit your pants

    going to moon walk out

    and forget all this happened.

    The what’s what

    about what not

    the whole ball of whoops.

    Charly Fasano is a poet, performer, filmmaker and block printer, as well as a Colorado Creative. Fasano has read his poems and shared the stage with bands like Lucero, Drag the River, 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, and others. He has a book of poems called Next Analog Broadcast, and a multimedia book & 7 inch called RETROSPECT/ED featuring the music of Lucero.

  • Ex Beauty Queen’s Birthday Party

    Ex Beauty Queen’s Birthday Party

    By Charly Fasano

     

    Illustration by Charly Fasano

     

    Everyone is waiting for the guest of honor.
    The birthday party at the senior center
    is turning into a round table argument about medications
    and sit and be fit exercises.

    Stretched secrets of survival pontificated by near centenarians.
    Exchanging advice on how to have an extra birthday.
    Always move it or lose it.
    Put a tobacco dip can next to the toilet.
    Drink a home brewed tonic made out of crushed daisy stems and cheap beer.

    A chorus of cane clicks
    the hum from walker legs wearing tennis balls sliding across linoleum.
    The party’s brought out all the residents’ best wigs, muumuus and tracksuit tuxedoes.

    Everyone’s excited to have a slice of the sugar free cake.
    It’s not a party until Girdy takes out her teeth.
    Alice and Linda tell stories about when they were arrested for wearing pants.
    Shrinking high school sports legends named Norman and Jed knee slap
    about days before baseball gloves and football helmets.

    Any and every tale about war. Plural.
    Dust bowls.
    Radio stories.
    Black and white television.
    Playing checkers on porches to the drone of cicada songs.
    Holding up the walls at Saturday night dances.
    Cider sipping on hayrides to nowhere for no reason.

    The birthday girl used to be a beauty queen.
    Maud’s window faces the street,
    She is watching traffic pass her time
    wearing the crown and sash
    and almost as much makeup
    as the the night she won Miss Quad Cities.

     

     

    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.

     

  • Typewriters

    Typewriters

    By Charly Fasano

     

     

     

    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.

     

  • 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.

     

  • 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.