Alex Graham is a painter and cartoonist from Denver. She is the author of Cosmic BE-ING and recently finished her graphic novel, Angloid. Her books can be found at Kilgore Books in Denver or on her website: alexNgraham.com.
Bring me the bowl so I can spit:
wild venom, woman at the stake, sweet
kindling. Hard hands, all that wind.
I think about my grandmother, lace
and ribbon, saccharine and secret
like a box of marzipan. Those strange
glances between rooms, moonlight burning
a hole in the Turkish rug.
I was born between the legs of fire.
I move too quickly, white porcelain crushed
under the heart of me.
I think of my mother, alone in this world.
The baby and always the sunrise.
Bring me the fur so I can sit:
feed the familiar, legs outstretched,
breasts heavy.
What a curse, this beauty
that won’t
drown.
Self-professed crazy cat lady and black coffee addict, Kate Levin graduated from UNC with a degree in English Literature. Her poetry has been featured in several student publications, most notably The Crucible. She is the first-place finalist of the 2016 Rosenberry Writer Awards in poetry and the winner of the Rosenberry Prize for her poem, “When Mourning Comes.” She is also the author of her self-published poetry chapbook, Letters to the Wind.
Lonnie MF Allen found his comic-art stride as a high-schooler dabbling in zines and mini-comics, eventually coming up through the ranks in the local comix scene, where he’s long been a regular among Denver’s close-knit cartooning community. An oft-published illustrator, writer and designer in addition to his niche as an award-winning cartoonist, and named one of Westword’s 100 Colorado Creatives, Allen is an organizer for the Denver Drink & Draw meet-up. His work has been published by Dark Horse, Image Comics, and he’s been nominated for an Eisner Award. Find him at lonniemfallen.com.
Jake Fairly oozed forth upon the Denver comics scene from the catacombs of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Be it comics about Neil Armstrong’s corpse, or generally being metal AF, Jake is a guy with considerably hefty night moves. He’s had work published in periodicals such as Westword and the Denver Public Library comics newspaper, and has been labeled a “street artist” by Westword magazine.
Eriko Tsogo is a Mongolian American visual artist and filmmaker born on the steppes of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Eriko grew up in Budapest, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of eight. She is based in Denver and mindscape Mongolia but lives bi-coastally in the US. Eriko has had numerous art shows, curatorial projects and art residencies throughout the United States. Eriko also works as the Creative Director at the Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado, in addition to being a published author and founder of “HiliteDreamer” contemporary apparel line. She is currently in process of completing her first international documentary animation film project between Colorado and Mongolia, due to release in 2019. Eriko’s ever-revolving identity as a first generation Mongolian American nomadic voyeur profoundly shapes her artistic process. Her artworks act as part biographical expose, portraying the universal psychological inner journey of the marginal identity thereby helping transform through the power of empathy, inspiration, and empowerment.
Ancient Future’s creative work is, ultimately, channeled work. She expresses through many mediums including visual art, costume and fashion, poetry, performance, ceremony, music and dance. Aesthetically, her work is compiled of imagery and information she receives through dreams, intuitive landscape, mystical experiences, ancient mythology and symbolism, modern science, future technology, the quantum realm, and artificial intelligence. Understanding existence as multidimensional, she sees and experiences past and future, and all dualistic concepts, as happening simultaneously within a single moment she calls The Eternal Now.
Sarah Gilstrap has been an artist for as long as she can remember. Enamored by the otherworldly & the mystical, her works depict the beauty & magic of everyday life.
Narwhal Slotterfield has a lot of issues. His social skills are questionable. His ethical approach, particularly in his work as a basketball referee, could charitably be called unusual; less charitably, it could be called a disaster. But his biggest problem is the fact that, for him and no one else, time seems to have literally come to a complete stop.
Slotterfield is the protagonist of Gregory Hill’s latest, and strangest novel, Zebra Skin Shirt, a tale of one man’s quest to find himself in a world where he’s the only thing moving. The story kicks off in earnest when Slotterfield relieves himself in a diner bathroom on the eastern plains of Colorado. During his moment of urination he’s inspired to propose to his girlfriend, Veronica, who’s waiting for him back at their table. Unfortunately for his plan, but perhaps fortunately for his soul, cosmic coincidence interferes, and when he exits the bathroom he finds himself in a unique predicament: the world has stopped, leaving him the only thing still moving.
In his now still, silent world, Slotterfield is, at first, still something of a jerk, but eventually his time alone—and some of the things he learns by peering into other people’s business, not to mention a bit of psilocybin—push him to reevaluate his past, his actions and his place in the world. It’s an epic tale in its own way, though less the Hero’s Journey and more the fool’s, with a suitably grand and thoroughly bizarre ending that manages to tie together time travel, Slotterfield’s improbable origins and the author’s two previous novels into a satisfying package.
It’s a literary novel that has plenty to say about the human condition, but don’t let that scare you off. Where some might choose to explicate those truths via long, ruminant passages from the mind of a sensitive and tortured protagonist, Hill does so with clever, biting wit and pure doses of absolute bugshit insanity, all held together with a solid story and some likable-despite-themselves characters. Absurd and surreal, without ever crossing the line into silliness, Zebra Skin Shirt is an excellent novel from an author that clearly understands the stupidity, chaos and madness of existence, and isn’t afraid to embrace it all and put it on the page.
Cory Casciato is a Denver-based writer with a passion for the geeky—from old science fiction movies to brand-new video games. His work has appeared in The AV Club, Colorado Public Radio, Westword and many other places. He really likes zombies.
There’s this skirt I always used to wear and sometimes still wear which sits all folded up in a tidy square in the bottom of my closet, in a drawer, in my dresser drawer, beside the socks. I pull it out every now and then, and sometimes it fits, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it’s too long, and sometimes it’s not, and it’s funny because I never know exactly what it’s going to be until I take it out and pull it on over my legs and up on my waist, which is sometimes just how I like it and sometimes not.
Today the skirt isn’t there. It isn’t anywhere, and there isn’t anything in my drawer or closet. I’m in my towel after a shower, after soaping dripping soaking the carpet in my room, with nothing to sop me up. I’m not sure how this happened, how the clothes disappeared, why they are no longer here.
I decide to call my girlfriend.
She answers, at work.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I say. I can barely hear. There’s a lot of noise on her end. “Where are my clothes?”
“I’m sorry?”
“My clothes!” I find myself yelling. “They’re gone!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about! You don’t ever know what I’m talking about!”
There’s silence.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She sighs.
I wait.
“I’ll be home at five,” she says.
By the time she arrives, I’ve dried off and ditched the towel. My face looks sour, but it’s because I just ate a lemon, wedge by wedge. I prop my elbows on the table, wiping a yellow fleck from my exposed breast and curling my legs tightly around the chair.
“What are you doing?” she asks, standing in the door and sounding annoyed.
“What are you doing?” I ask back.
“Coming home from work. Looking at you, confused. Wondering why you aren’t wearing any clothes.”
“Wondering? I already told you. They’re all gone.”
She scrunches her eyes and scratches her head.
“I don’t think you should really mind the fact that I’m not wearing clothes,” I say, slowly. “You should be happy. Right?”
She walks over and climbs on me, spider-style, pulling her pant-covered legs over my bare ones. “I am happy,” she says, in a tone that would suggest otherwise. “I’m just stressed,” she says.
I nod. “I can tell. And I’m sorry.”
She nods back, then drops her head to rest in the curve of my neck.
“I’m stressed too,” I say, stroking her hair. “To the point of disfunction, disuse. I mean, look at me. I can’t even get dressed.”
She lifts her eyes to meet mine, and lets out a laugh, which rolls across me like water, like taking a giant bath. I let my head fall back and find myself laughing as well.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says.
“You are too,” I respond, but at the same time, she says, “I’m leaving. I’m sorry. I have to.”
I look down at the stack of our thighs, with hers on top of mine, and I’ve known for a few days now that this was coming. I wouldn’t say, but I knew it. I wrap my hands around her calves and grip them tight. “Is there someone else?”
She shakes her head. “No. But also, yes. In the way that I feel like I’m someone else.”
My eyes are all wet, but I laugh. “You are so full of cheese.”
She also laughs. Because she is, and she knows it.
I’m still sitting there, with no clothes and an empty closet, when she leaves.
Rebecca Hannigan is a staff reviewer for Into the Void and junior editor for F(r)iction. Her work is forthcoming in Juked, and can be found in Stain’d, wigleaf, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and elsewhere. For further reading, go to rebeccahannigan.wordpress.com.
I walked in the room
She said I reeked of death
I said “I’m an American what the fuck you expect?
I owe 40 million dead Indians for all my success.”
The last thing I wrote for Suspect Press, the magazine I launched with Brian Polk over four years ago, was a letter from the editor. The letter expressed my need to shut my mouth, and take a hard look at myself. Despite my successes as a restaurateur (City, O’ City, Watercourse), I was becoming disenfranchised and lost within a changing city and couldn’t find the strength to admit it. I hid the fact that I felt lost like a tourist trying to not look at a map. I strolled along with aimless confidence portraying a false image of what success looks like.
Since writing that letter from the editor I’ve followed through and shut my mouth. This process led me to shutting many other things. I shut down my social media accounts. I sold my businesses and my sweet little Cap Hill home. I ditched my smartphone and replaced it with a flip phone (not sure how long this will last—texting is a bitch on a numeric keyboard). I closed my Spotify, Netflix and Hulu accounts. I turned off the news. I quit drinking. I hardly write anymore, but I read a lot. While I’ve become bored with my own thoughts, I am devouring the thoughts of others. I am grateful that Suspect Press exists for this reason.
Shutting my mouth adversely affected my worth as a conversationalist. I don’t really care about opinions—yours or mine. I don’t trust any sources of information unless divine. Divine to me, anyway.
Those without faith
Are limited to logic
I had reached the limits of what Western thought could show me. Deducing, categorizing, rationalizing and quantifying were not going to help me find my way. The scientific method killed the magic that I so much need in my life.
My father taught me
How to not dance
Lost and quiet I’ve been trying to locate myself. Where am I? Literally. Where am I on earth? Denver.
The buildings make the city
The land makes it stand
Denver’s footprint leans against the Eastern slope of the Rockies facing the Great Plains and stretches up and down the Front Range. The South Platte River confluences with the Cherry Creek in the energetic center of Denver and then continues northeast to eventually deposit into the Gulf of Mexico. For millennia, the confluence was an important landmark for migratory hunters (today it hosts REI—the Fascinations for outdoor fetishists). Cold air, blowing east over the Rockies, pools in the valley as the warm air from the Plains settles over it creating a thermal inversion trapping the cold air and all its accompanying pollutants.
The migratory people never camped near the confluence. The smoke from their fire would be trapped under the inversion, signaling their exact location to others. Fast-forward a thousand years, and on cold days the stench of the Greeley slaughterhouses hovers above Denver city like rancid breath.
I enjoyed being locked in this room with you
However,
If I knew the key was hidden beneath the welcome mat
I would have left much earlier
Denver is becoming massive. All the new asphalt, buildings and people have created a thermal mass that soaks up the heat during the day like a cast iron skillet and emits the heat back slowly into the cool night. I like to look at Denver from the foothills at 9000 feet. I go there to figure out where I am. From that vantage point the confluence looks like the center of a vortex sucking in the surrounding counties.
From the mountaintop I spin a slow 360 degrees. Where am I? To the North the spine of the Rockies divides the watershed. My mind reaches West toward the California shoreline, where 20 million people, guided by wanderlust and the desire for a better life, now wonder where the fuck to go. I turn to the East Coast, where a man lives in a white house built by people who were beat into servitude; he seems to enjoy smearing his feces over everyone. Finally down South to the Mexico border where Americans do as they’re told, upholding the law, and separating parents from their children.
Where am I? I close my eyes and meditate on the Four Directions. The morning sun of the East. The abundance of the South. The cold North and the promise of the West. Here I am. Always and forever in the middle. Wherever I go I am always and forever in the middle.
Aho mitakuye oyasin; all my relations.
The people who migrated across this land believed that they were related to all things. I don’t. I understand the concept that everything is made from stardust—but I can’t help feeling separate. Rocks are rocks, trees are trees, stars are stars and I am in awe of them. Separate and in awe, like an alien observing a foreign land. Perhaps I am an alien. I don’t feel related to all things but I am aware that I can find myself in relation to all things by the Four Directions.
Writing this for Suspect Press has been difficult. I used to love sharing my thoughts and stories, and perhaps I will again. For now I am systematically dismantling a scientific view of my existence. I am letting go. A sail pulled by unpredictable winds. There is no apology here. No regrets. Those sentiments only serve to placate me. I desire to get right with my god, to acknowledge my privilege and what it took for me to get here. Who was oppressed and eliminated to put me in a position of authority? I know the answers and it ain’t pretty.
We can only make amends for the atrocities of our ancestors
When we stop reaping the benefits of their crimes
I look up:
What the blue sky above Denver City told me:
‘On this desert lies hope.
You are not on this desert.
You are on the one below it.’
I no longer act like I know what I’m doing. It’s better to be honestly lost than falsely found.
J. James McFarland is a self-employed Boulder illustrator. He’s made his home in lots of places over the years, including Denver, Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Alaska, Poulsbo, and many rural towns. He’s a commercial illustrator, fine artist, and graphic designer with over a decade of experience. Transforming big concepts into straightforward visuals is part of his life daily. He LOVES comics, using storytelling to create an emotional reaction from his readers. He believes in the principle of attraction rather than promotion.