The FBomb Reading Series at the Mercury Cafe Ends...for Now

Nick Morris, a writer and Community College of Denver professor who's been one of the leaders of the mostly monthly flash-fiction FBomb events at the Mercury Cafe, proudly says that he once pissed off a room full of poets at a conference.

"History is written by the winners," he recalls saying, with a performative, self-effacing finger aloft in the air, "and poetry is written by the losers." That's because, he says, the minority voices of the world need an outlet to vent their frustration, challenge authority and share their demands for justice. It's the privileged narrative versus that of the disenfranchised. "But I couldn't even get to make that point," Morris says, and laughs. "I'd lost the room completely. I was like, 'I came here to share my poems — I'm the loser I'm talking about. I'm one of you!' But it was too late."

His thoughts might not have been popular at that writing conference, but they would have been welcomed with open arms at the FBomb readings that have taken place in Denver for over a decade. And that's as precise an age as the founders can manage: In the charmingly insouciant style of the FBomb, no one can quite recall even the year the series started. "Thirteen-ish years?" says Morris. "Let's just call it a good run."

The FBombs' good run comes to an end on Tuesday, November 19, at the Mercury Cafe. You never know how long these events will last, but this one might run longer than its sometimes several-hour expanse, what with all the inevitable tears and hugs and tributes and goodbyes. Get there early, grab a good seat, bring a hankie and get ready to rumble in flash-fiction fashion. Details are, as has been traditional for FBomb, relatively scant, but more information can be found on the FBomb website. It's very much a spontaneous thing, this reading series. And that was the plan from the beginning.

FBomb started as the brainchild of award-winning writer and CU Boulder professor Nancy Stohlman, who says she wanted to expand what Denver offered in terms of literary exposure.

"When I started it, there were no reading series — none that I knew of, certainly — that were dedicated to prose, and absolutely none to flash fiction," she recalls. "But there was also a gap in terms of the vibe. A lot of the readings were either open-mic nights or a precise schedule of established writers — both of which can be either great or a little dry. I wanted to take both those things, add a little creativity and a lot of humor, stop taking ourselves so seriously, read prose and get better at that reading in terms of audience. I really feel like we filled a hole in the literary landscape. We were doing something different. Playful and positive and inclusive."

Morris agrees wholeheartedly with that sentiment. "I've brought a lot of people to FBomb over the years, and when I tell them it's a reading, I can see it in their eyes: Really? A reading? And I'm always like, 'I promise you, this is nothing like you've ever seen before,'" he says. "The FBomb always had a rock-and-roll atmosphere. In some ways it was modeled on something like Saturday Night Live. Different host, different feel every time so it could stay fresh, you know? It was the opposite of what people think a reading really is."

The formula set up by Stohlman and later carried on by Morris worked. "Some months we'd have forty people there," Morris recalls, "and some months we struggled to get ten. But people always loved it."

FBomb settled quickly and well into a regular gig on the third Tuesday night of eleven months of the year. "We always took December off," Morris says. "It was sort of a breather, but it was also because that time of year, everyone just had other things going on." Even during the pandemic, FBomb missed only a couple of months before resuming on Zoom, and returned to live and in-person shows as soon as social distancing ebbed.

A big part of the event's long success story has been the Mercury Cafe, which has operated since 1990 at the corner of 22nd and California streets. FBomb didn't start its run there — that would be at the Bar on Broadway, which later became Syntax Physic Opera and is now the Roxy on Broadway. "FBomb moved pretty quickly to the Merc," says Morris, "and that really became our place. The aesthetic there totally fit what we were doing month to month. It was a perfect partnership while it's lasted; as soon as we found ourselves there, it was like, 'Aaah, this is where we should be.'"

But the legendary Merc has recently hit some turbulent waters. Longtime owner Marilyn Megenity sold the business to Denver developer Danny Newman, who'd already bought My Brother's Bar; he's found this particular location more challenging, and put the Merc up for sale earlier this year. "It just became clear to us that it wasn't going to work much longer," Morris says. "And I had to admit that I didn't have the bandwidth for finding a new venue. Denver in general is just getting rough on reading series."

Reading events aren't the only ones considering wrapping things up. "I had just come that very weekend from a concert in Vermont where some friends who'd had this band for over thirty years were putting on their final concert," says Stohlman. "And all that time, we were all talking about how sometimes we just need to control our own ending. So I was already in this space of the wisdom of going out on top, you know? Don't prolong it and peter out. Do the John Elway instead of the Tom Brady."

So when Morris brought up the idea of ending the FBomb, it just seemed to make sense. "And it doesn't mean it can't rise again," Stohlman notes. "Yes, this season of our lives might be ending, but with the closing of that door, another door might open."

Stohlman adds that the decision to put a period at the end of the FBomb sentence is about artistic endeavor. "There's something that happens when an artist of any sort gets too practiced at what they're doing, and they become afraid to do anything else," she smiles. "That's when we get Bon Jovi's Christmas album. It becomes a thing that's not necessary in this world."

"And just to extend the ’80s music metaphor," Morris adds with a grin, "Nancy is sort of David Lee Roth, which makes me Sammy Hagar, and we're desperately trying to avoid the Gary Cherone era of the FBomb."

FBomb, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 19, Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street. The event is free; for more information, see the FBomb website.