What happens to our worlds when the supernatural, the fantastic, the “fictional,” or the marginalized (be it others or the “otherness” in ourselves) form a part of everyday life? How do they connect to our own “normal” or “centered” senses of self? To our relationship or perception of others? What does it mean to live as if the terms “real” and “imaginary,” “normal” and “weird,” are not at odds with one another? How does the “imaginary” or “unreal” have the potential to destabilize, interrogate, revitalize, and, indeed, haunt and animate what it is we regard as “real” and “true?” How is the eccentric (ex-center) the true center? How is the strange and discarded the new essential?

For this month’s F-Bomb, you are invited to reflect on these themes in your writing. In the spirit of All Hallows’ Eve, readers and guests alike are welcomed to dress in costume! Feel free to dress as your alter ego/egos (they could be figures from the past, from the present, fictional or real, familial or futural, from cartoons or movies, from childhood or current adult imaginings) and speak to them or even as them in your writing. Maybe the “ghosts” that haunt us (and not always in a negative way) and the ghosts that we ourselves worry about becoming intersect to holistically envelope—to accept and (g)host—who we are.

Join us at Mercury Café on Tuesday October 17 at 7:30 PM! Four-minute open mic spots available to share your work, on theme or not.

HOST JOMIL EBRO is a professor of Composition, Creative Writing, and Journalism, Philosophy and the Humanities at Arapahoe Community College. His Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature and Consciousness Studies from the University of Iowa, where he also trained at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. At New York University, he received an M.A. in Communication and an M.A. in Cultural Studies. His poetry and critical essays include “Seizure of Happiness, Or, Two Almonds” in Cobra Milk (Fall 2020); “A State of Otonomy: Henry Miller’s Obscene Autobiographical Form” in the Modern Horizons Journal (June 2018); “The Calligraphy of Trees: Towards an Ethics of ‘Mysreading’ in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy” in the Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies Vol. 3, Issue 2 (February 2018); “I’ll-iterate Thinking: Poetry, Perception, and the Dissolution of Center/Periphery Duality” in the Peripheral Matters Journal from the City University of New York (CUNY, Fall 2017); and “The Nearness of Elsewhere: Place and the Ethics of Remembrance in The Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin and Li Po” in the Modern Horizons Journal (June 2012). 

FEATURED READER STEVEN DUNN a.k.a. Pothole (cuz he’s deep in these streets) is the author of two novels, Potted Meat and water & power. His third novel, Tannery Bay, is co-written with his homie Katie Jean Shinkle, is forthcoming from FC2 in February 2024. He teaches in the MFA programs at Regis University and Stetson University.

A graduate of the University of Northern Colorado, FEATURED READER BRIAN A.S. BYRDSONG is the author of a short story collection titled, The Queerest Touch. He is also the creator and writer of “A Byrd Mind“, a fiction anthology podcast. When he’s not writing, spending time with his husband or “parenting” his adorable cats, Brian can often be seen around town (and sometimes out of it), performing as the bearded drag diva, Shamy Lee. Brian aims to bring fantasy to the mundanity of life using the power of the written word and the magic of drag.