An Excerpt from “Casanova Must Die” by Dan Shapiro

NEW FICTION

He sensed a heightened tension in her voice. What did she expect? Being grilled, especially first thing in the morning, was not his thing.  He was not a morning person. 

That damn vinyl siding company again! He’d already told them to stop calling. “Vinyl siding is great if you’re a homeowner, but I live in a six-story apartment building. So, take me off your list and stop calling!” he said and disconnected. 

A minute later the phone rang again. Before he could even say hello, she was reading him the riot act. “You do that again, I’m going to take your fucking wallet and throw it in the river!” 

He was surprised she would call. He’d pretty much given up on recovering his wallet. 

“How’d you get my number?”

“Your name and address are right on your driver’s license, Einstein. Just called directory assistance. Six lousy bucks! And your credit cards are expired.” 

“Are you going to return it or what?” 

“You bet I am. For insufficient funds. I also have a proposition for you.” 

“What kind of proposition?” His labored breathing caused by a deviated septum gave her the wrong impression.

“Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Margo.”

He remembered her now. Wild brown eyes. A beauty mark under her right eye. White capris and red Nikes. The type of woman that normally wouldn’t give him the time of day.

    

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Cold” by Holly Day

NEW POETRY

I walk down the street putting rocks into my pockets
because they’re pretty and I want them, I whistle at the birds fluttering overhead
talk to squirrels, tell everything how much it’s loved, I want everything to know
how much I love them, everything around me I don’t know why.

My husband tells me I don’t pay enough attention to him, and I
wallow in guilt as I make his sandwiches and cookies for work
my daughter shouts that having me for a mother is like being raised
by an angry wolf, I curl up inside, imagine my heart is a fireplace.

Out in the garden, I set the rocks from my walk in a neat pile
imagine how much the frogs hiding in the greenery will enjoy these rocks
tell the invisible frogs how I got these rocks just for them
fuss over the pile until everything is balanced in such a way that they will not fall.

My husband tells me I talk to the dog more than I talk to him, my daughter
tells me how happy she’ll be to move out in a couple of years
I close my eyes and imagine a house of silence and warmth
imagine that I can get these noisy things to love me as much as I love them.

Holly Day‘s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Huge House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.

Three Possible New Paths for Fiction Writing

HOW TO SAVE LITERATURE: NEW IDEAS

1.) NATURALISTIC WRITING

Reality. Hyper-reality. Crimes, passion, tragedy.

2.) MULTIDIMENSIONAL WRITING

Fast-changing viewpoints as exhibited in this short story, as experimental as anything by Lance Olsen and the officially designated “avant-garde” experimental crowd. But more fun.

3.) POP FICTION

The peak pop writer, at least in his widely popular Saturday Evening Post stories, was F.Scott Fitzgerald. Fun stories and fun settings with stylish clear writing and the occasional sparkling insight. Always a playful undercurrent of sex. The pop story was quintessentially American.

WHAT WE HAVE

Artistic dead ends.

-K. Wenclas

“Optional Nourishment” by John Zedolik

NEW POETRY

Foolish to be consuming a huge juicy pear

at seventeen degrees of a mid-January day

while the wind whipped so froze my fingers

flushed with the fruit’s water

as the naked skin burned then numbed

in the stripping air young in this year

and even an iota more foolish to be toting

a bilingual book of Borges’ verse

exposed then receiving a drop of dripping

pulp upon the pages’ upright edge, whose stain

no flicker or rub of now warmed finger

could remove, so soaked into the fiber,

now an irregular umbra and penumbra

spreading almost cover to cover, an elongated

oval russet just drying to aged and average

brown, with my volume now maculate with evidence

of experience and error, yet not marring the print,

poetry in either tongue upon the pure white below

so the consequence minor, just a reminder

to consider and be humble at the juncture

of choices as the near future ripens

in atmospheres, measured seasons of promised

heat and the fair recompense of stinging cold.

John Zedolik is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore Review (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Transom, Writer’s Block (NED), and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His full-length collections include Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), Mother Mourning, The Ramifications (Wipf & Stock), Lovers’ Progress (Wipf & Stock), and Triple Muse (Wipf & Stock). All these collections are available on Amazon.

An Excerpt from “Contact” by Joe Del Castillo

NEW FICTION

“Oh no, he can’t. My father died a year ago yesterday.” She tapped his shoulder. “Do you think that’s significant? The fact that they died on the same day, a year apart?”   

Blake didn’t think so and didn’t want to hear some stranger’s life story. Hoping it would end the discourse, he said, “I think it means your dad was a very special person.” 

“He was.”   

Hours earlier, back in his apartment, Blake had pondered calling Christine. He’d stare at his wall phone, consider picking it up, but didn’t follow through. Instead, he called the office and lied, saying he was ill, unable to go in. Well, he was ill, emotionally sick to his stomach, reeling from the reports of the murder of John Lennon the night before. Throughout the morning, he occupied himself by pulling out his Beatles and Lennon’s solo record albums. He gazed at the pictures and read the liner notes, knowing but not yet comprehending that a door had shut, a wall had risen, over his past. Since last night, it seemed the entire world had focused on the Dakota. He watched on TV as crowds had collected outside to hold an impromptu vigil. Seeing that, he decided to join them. No doubt, he would find Christine there. That had to be better than phoning and possibly having to talk to her husband.

The mist turned to rain. The woman opened her umbrella and covered them both. 

“Thank you.” 

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Blessed Are the Warmakers” by Joe Johnson

NEW “FICTION”?

(image c/o cnn)

NOTE: This is not an Official White House press release.

Blessèd are our warriors. No nation rises to greatness without great warriors. The Council of Virility feeds our warriors war foods. Our warriors are pure with the eating of factory-fed cattle. This food makes warriors with fervent testicles.

We are blessed to send our virile warriors and fecund missiles to a desert war. The Council of Winning prefers desert wars. Desert wars run brief like a good humping. 

Blessèd is our just war. We only fight just wars. We know they are just wars because we have chosen them. 

The Council of Right Belief called on the God of Blessing. The Council said, “O greatest lord. If you will bless us in this war, say nothing.” The God of Blessing said nothing. He is on our side.

Blessèd are our war machines. The Council of Inventory reminds us we have the best missiles and machines. But they sour without use. They are like the swelling testes of men rebuked by frigid women.

The nations we war are blessed to be warred by us. The Council of Friendship has received many gratitudes from these nations. They say, “Your warring makes us feel loved.” Former nations ask us to return and war them again.

Blessèd are our war thoughts. Our news programs tell the truest truths. The Council of Right Thinking recommends many movies of handsome men who fight our just wars. They are right-thinking. Their war uniforms and superhero suits bulge with ample testicles. Other nations watch our entertainments and envy our blessings.

Praise the new war! Many nations fight old wars. We are blessed to be in a new war. The Council of New Wars is now planning new seasons of wars. 

The Council of Good Breeding urges war with Sweden and Australia. Those nations’ women are attractive to us. The Council of Good Breeding invites them to breed with us. They will be blessed by our war foods and our endowed men.

Blessèd are our true offspring. The Council of Good Breeding urges our own women to be fertile and raise warriors, engineers, and podcasters. These children must learn the language of war: consume, calculate, condemn, liberate. We urge our own women to breed boy-children with symmetrical testicles. Breed girl-children with comely complexions. 

The Council of Good Breeding desires fair pigmentations and natural pronouns. Let the land abound in pink and blue. 

Rejoice, o great nation! Again, I say rejoice!

Blessèd is our leader. The Council of Authority reminds us we have the best leader. Thank the God of Blessing for our good leader. Some leaders do not pursue warmaking. History forgets these leaders. They are like eunuchs who graze on grass. But our leader eats red meat. His rotund testicles dangle like cured sausages. They have satisfied many attractive women. 

Rejoice, o great nation! Relish this new war!

Behold! We have many great wars to come. Reproduce and think right. Behold the glory of our good wars! Behold the nation whose copious emissions bless the world!

Joe Johnson lives in Portland following a lifetime in the Yakima Valley among the hills and river and growing things. His stories have appeared in Catamaran, Monkeybicycle, and X-R-A-Y, among others. He won Peatsmoke Journal’s fiction contest and Carve Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award. He holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. joejohnsonwrites.com

“Notes From a Hotel Balcony” by Joseph Pfister

NEW FICTION

Who knows what thoughts cross the man’s mind as he gazes upon this glittering, green slice of paradise? Who can map that tangled interior, those labyrinth chambers of his mind? What memories flare like sparks, and which corners remain dark, dormant?

Does the sight of so many all-but-naked bodies stir something in him? Or does it pull him backward—to his mother, to her hand tugging him toward the car after swim, to a half-remembered sermon about shame, to the certainty that beauty and loss are always intertwined? Does the crash of breakers remind him of the relentless crush of time? Or does it remind him of the natural ebb and flow of all things? Of the sweet futility of resistance?

Perhaps his thoughts are smaller, pettier: Are the Mets losing (again)? Does the rental car really have to be returned with a full tank of gas? Does the persistent bump on his left testicle warrant a call to Dr. Benson? Or another month of avoidance? Does he turn over, again and again, the whisper-fight with his wife by the pool, the one about nothing and everything?

Does he worry about his waistline? His cholesterol—the bad one—which Dr. Benson warned him to keep an eye on? Does he worry about the hair gathering in the drain and the twinge in his left knee that feels like a harbinger, even though he’s not even fifty? Does he consider the balance on his credit card, the health of his parents in Phoenix, NATO, genocide, the day-by-day destruction of democracy and the earth itself?

Will he remember to tip the valet? The housekeeper? Does he wonder how his investments are doing and whether he should get that new iPhone and will his oldest daughter go in state or out of state, which is what the man and his wife were fighting about, anyway? Should he check his fantasy team for the thousandth time today? And beneath all this static, does he glimpse it? The truth? That everything is fleeting? That he is one of those waves, rolling endlessly toward the shore, collapsing in a rush of foam and silence? Does he recognize that he is just like those surfers standing on their boards in the setting sun, caught up in the sweep of something beyond their control?

Joseph Pfister’s fiction has appeared in Hobart, PANK, Juked, and X-R-A-Y, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College.

“The Moment He Realized She Wasn’t For Him” by Brenton Booth

NEW POETRY

(image c/o wtfarthistorydotcom)

They were at

the National

Gallery of

London. He

stood frozen

before

Vincent van 

Gogh’s 

“Sunflowers”.

Totally

mesmerized

by Vincent’s

artistry; the

still life’s vast

confounding

beauty.

She casually

pulled up

beside him.

Intensely

focusing on

the painting

an extended

period.

Asking why

he was

wasting so 

much

time on

such an

amateurish

work.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. His poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, and North Dakota Quarterly, among other journals.

“Taylor and Boyfriend Go Incognito”

NEW FICTION

(image c/o usatoday)

a short story by K. Wenclas

“ARE YOU SURE people won’t recognize us?” Taylor’s boyfriend– nicknamed Big T– said to her in whispered tones as they sat in a McDonald’s chowing down on Big Macs and vanilla shakes.

Neither had actually sat inside a Mickey D’s in over a decade. Even drive-thru orders were scary, especially for Taylor, who’d be mobbed by hordes of fans within minutes of word getting out that her customized Mercedes Viano MPV or her Ferrari 458 Italia V10 was in line.

Today they were both dressed in shabby plaid green-and-blue lumberjack shirts with grimy jeans, with gray woolen caps on their heads, and for some crazy reason, large sunglasses with white frames, Audrey Hepburn style.

Rather than incognito, they looked more like circus clowns. With backs turned, however, they were off-putting, especially Big T because of his size. 

Big T had an order of seven Big Macs and three large milk shakes in front of him. Making up for lost time.

Meanwhile, cashiers and workers behind the Mickey D counter whispered among themselves.

“That couldn’t possibly be. Could it be?”

“No way. Those two are bums.”

“I think that’s them,” a third worker said. “I’m texting my frens.” 

Big T was telling Taylor his frustrations at Too Much Fame.

“Too much publicity!” he said, his voice rising, Taylor beneath her giant sunglasses looking concerned. “And none of it for me! My play on the field in fact has gone to shit this season. I’m stumbling around because I’m getting no sleep, reporters and podcasters are everywhere and I can’t think of anything, babe, but YOU. On stage. Getting all the attention while we lose games, Kermit’s getting fat and all my hopes of being a first ballot Hall of Fame player have gone down the toilet. My play has become CRAP!”

With that he pounded the table they sat at, hard, milk shakes and hamburgers flying, three sleeping homeless people in the restaurant jolted awake.

Simultaneously a crowd gathered outside the McDonald’s, faces gaping at the window. “Is that Taylor? We want Taylor!”

Soon a chant began.

“WE WANT TAYLOR! WE WANT TAYLOR!!”

“Call the bodyguards!” Big T said, reaching in his pocket for his own phone which fell on the floor and slid away from him like a fumbled football, Taylor calmly touching buttons on her own.

“GOT IT!” Big T yelled, sprawling across the hard tiled floor while a phalanx of husky black-clad bodyguards in sunglasses charged toward the restaurant entrance from a waiting limousine, which hundreds of crazed fans had got hold of and began rocking side-to-side as if to overturn it.

While the McDonald’s employees paused what they were doing to watch, the first break they’d had in their slave wage assembly line job for hours.

-Karl Wenclas