“Already Almost Over: Part Two” by Filiz Turhan

NEW FICTION

I was attending the opera with my friends Jenn and Melissa. Before going in, we ran into an acquaintance of theirs. As they chatted, I was thinking, “Gosh, this man looks so familiar!” Later, it came to me. He resembled the actor John Lithgow. I meant to mention this to Melissa, but in the rush of people getting in to see Madama Butterfly, I forgot all about it.

After the show, we were in the corridors under Lincoln Center on our way to the subway. We approached a doorway and they went first; as I entered behind them, a man tried to dart through from the other direction so that we were both in the doorway at the same time. I am very short and the man was very tall.

It was John Lithgow. The REAL John Lithgow.

In that moment of proximity, he asked, “Excuse me, do you know the way to the stage door?”

Time stopped as I was already calculating the wild improbability of this encounter. I wished I could have explained to him all about the Lithgow look-alike, how, in my opinion, real-Lithgow should have waited for me to pass through the door first, that we had a cool six-degrees of separation thing (I had briefly known his Third Rock co-star, Kristen Johnston, back in 1986 when she was the summer roommate of my best friend Meredith), that in fact, I had no damn idea where the stage door was (why should I), but alas, this was already almost over because neither of us had ever stopped moving.

What I actually blurted out to the perplexed man was: “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you right now.”

Part 3 coming in three days.

Filiz Turhan is a writer and community college English professor, living on the North Shore of Long Island. Her work has appeared in The Sonora Review, The Threepenny Review, The North American Review, Litbreak.com, and elsewhere. She likes cats.

“Already Almost Over” by Filiz Turhan

NO. 1: MOMOA MAMA

New Fiction: a story in 3 parts

(image c/o uhdmaxdotnet)

A storm was expected and the ocean was already churning. I had been walking along the shore for a while, leaving behind the blankets, frisbees, and guys hawking ice cream cones crowding the beach. All my senses were engaged by my surroundings: the sight of the sea foam bubbling on the shore, the roar of the surf, the smell and taste of the salt sea air, and the feel of scratchy hot sand underfoot. A wide-brimmed hat and Italian movie star sunglasses protected me from the beating sun.

Walking toward me was Aquaman star, Jason Momoa.

OK, it wasn’t really him, but a guy who looked just like him, a gorgeous man with perfect hair, a beautifully sculpted six-pack, and photoshopped pecs (except, wait, this was reality!) I mean, just wow. With him was a little girl, maybe three or four years old, tight dark curls above a lovely little face. Dripping wet, they must have just emerged from those pounding waves.

As we came abreast, the little girl side-eyed me a few times. I realized she was going to say something to me. What could it be?

“Mama,” she goes, “Is that you?”

Time stopped as I played through several alternate realities, the primary one of which involved me saying: “Yes, my darling, yes, I am your mama, and this man, this aquatic man, is your daddy, my husband!”

And then Jason, Ariel and I would dive under those insane stormy waves and swim away to our underwater palace.

Alas, no.

Jason Momoa laughed and said, “Sweetie, that’s not your mama.”

Then he called to me over his shoulder (because none of us had ever stopped moving and this was already almost over): “Sorry about that!”

Oh, no, Jason. Please, do not apologize.

(NO. 2 coming in two days.)

“The Man in the Park” by Ben Macnair

NEW POETRY

It is 12.03, early afternoon.
The man in the park takes another
swig from his can, and tells everyone
in hearing distance to enjoy every second.

He is having a good time of it,
but everyone else looks uncomfortable,
their lunch time break tainted, as they walk by.
It is only luck that means we can pass,
and think, there but for the grace of God, go I.

Ben Macnair is an award winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter/X @benmacnair.

“Rick” by Julia Piehler

NEW POETRY

Leaning backwards pressed against the wall
Yellow roses fill my arms
I rarely liked photos of myself
But this candid
Framed by Rick’s camera
Really pleased me from the first

It was a wrench that the
Flowers and the photos
Came from Rick, my parents’ friend
And not my parents

I rode home on the back of his Honda 750
The hot exhaust pipes shiny
My long white graduation dress hiked to my hips
Panels waving in the wind
Leaning with him as he steered
Me through the curves

Julia Piehler authored our two previous poems here, as prelude to the next feature at our main site.

“Otherness” by Julia Piehler

NEW POETRY

Creature from beneath the waves
Made its way through the turbulent ocean surf
To die drowning in the sharp air of our windy shore

The giant Pacific octopus is five feet long
Its skin is white and its huge eyes blue
I feel desperate to save it
But when I circle it in my arms to carry it to the water
Its proper milieu in life
I find a mortal wound on its underside
Blood not red, but blue, leaks quietly

Do its three hearts throb with love and fear of death?
How do I comfort it in its departing moments
When it is so foreign and its habits solitary?

Ten days before Dave died
Cancer having stripped him
of flesh and height
We stood hugging each other deeply
And I whispered
the volume of my love.
I knew how to comfort him.
In that moment
No otherness divided us.

Julia Piehler authored our previous poem at Fast Pop Lit, “A Rose Dance.” We’ll be presenting one more poem of hers here– as lead in to our next feature at our main site.

“A Rose Dance” by Julia Piehler

NEW POETRY

My roses waltzed in the gusting breeze
Partnered by their shadows created
By the low-angled sun

Unseasonably warm for March
Which has slighted the gardens
of the rain due them

Saturated colors and pungent perfume
A return for the care showered on them
Irrigation I furtively give
Despite the drought

Their cousins the apple trees
Also load the breeze
With offerings of curtains of petals
Curtains tapering like arms of stars
In the Milky Way
Each petal softer than a breath

Do roses recognize the gardener?
Do they know the character
of all the snipping and clipping
while painful brings new growth?
Do we?

Julia Piehler has published in technical journals and compendia during a high-tech career. Her work spanned many job functions. Throughout her career she has collected bouquets of stories that will appeal to the general reader. She was educated at Harvard and Stanford where she specialized in geochemistry.

An Excerpt from “A Fading” by Aspen Audley

NEW FICTION!

It was the first day. I was new to the school, knew no one, and hoped that, with this fresh start, I could shed my usual shy personality and make real friends.

The girl on my right had hair as short as a boy’s. She was petite in stature, small-boned, with rosy cheeks, glossy lips, and heavily-lashed, ice blue eyes.

She noticed me looking at her. “Hey, are you new?”

We weren’t supposed to be talking, and I’d never broken a classroom rule, but I decided to answer her.

“Yes.”

She smiled. “I was new last year. Do you have Recess A or B?”

I told her I had A.

“Me too,” she said. “My name’s Megan.”

A bubble of happiness rose in my chest. “I’m Camila.”

She leaned forward as though she were going to say something else, but Mrs. Donavan interjected.

“Megan and Camila, no talking. That’s one mark for each of you. Remember: three marks, and you must stay inside at recess.”

Her voice hurled out like a cannonball, and I slid down into my chair, trying to avoid my classmates’ stares. I gazed at the floor, letting my vision go blurry for a moment. When I refocused, I saw a tiny ant scampering about under my desk. It meandered in circles a few times then darted off into space, out of view. I grew jealous. Ants can run away whenever they want. Sure would be nice.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

An Excerpt from “Opting Out” by Evan Brown

NEW FICTION

It started just outside a decrepit strip mall in Jackson, Tennessee. Back in the 1970s, my dad told me it was a great place to shop and eat. I can still see him listing off all the places that disappeared, one for each gnarled arthritic finger: a Walden’s Bookstore, a K-Mart, a shoe store, and at the center, Robert Morris Cafeteria. He went there every Friday, ordering either liver and onions or trout amandine.

It was also next to the People’s Protective Building—the name of a regional insurance company before they all got swallowed up. Dad raged about everything being swallowed up. He no longer wanted to live in a place where technocrats and kleptocrats pushed global over local and sold his memories back to him as Boomer nostalgia bait on Facebook. He resented his past being warped, the erosion of simple traditions, and the feeling of being forced to live in a world he no longer recognized.

He wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Sir Peter Buys the Literary World”

NEW FICTION BY KARL WENCLAS

(image c/o mansionglobal)

ONE MORNING financier Sir Peter Plutocrat, waking up in his 57-room mansion west of London, in the United Kingdom, decided he hadn’t enjoyed the article he’d read in Britain’s faux-conservative newspaper last night– it was not conservative enough— and decided to buy the publication.

“It’s those ‘creative’ writers,” he muttered to himself as a robot maid brought him tea and biscuits on a silver tray. “Bloody wankers!”

The robot opened drapes in the room so Sir Peter, a ruddy-complexioned man never lacking in arrogance and privilege, could look out on the enormous lawn where robot groundskeepers were already at work. At that moment Sir Peter decided to buy up every pretentious “literary” periodical in the U.K.

A few weeks later he stopped in at one of them, Overheard Magazine, in their posh London offices in an historic building in a 17th century tavern. Accompanied by three robots who moved impassively behind him. To Sir Peter’s surprise, staffers were typing furiously on desktops.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “You’re figureheads. You’re not supposed to write anything! We have AI chatbots for that. You’re supposed to look snooty and privileged. Like persons who attended Eton and Oxford, as you did. Do you understand? Pose is all.”

He looked at the staffers parked at historic dark wood desks.

“And don’t pout! On second thought, do pout. It looks properly aristocratic. But throw in a sneer or two on occasion. Be above it all. Tell yourself: writing is drudge work, fit only for proles and robots.”

The line of motorized robots followed Sir Peter out the door.

Sir Peter transferred Overheard‘s success to America. He bought up a host of trust-fund-founded intellectual, cultural and literary journals on the “left” and “right”: Me-Plus-Two; Carnival Affairs; The Baffled; Pseudo-Marxist Reviews; and Kompackt Rag, among others. Sir Peter merged several of them. The editors, “the best and brightest” that could be purchased, had known one another at Yale and Brown and not got along.

“Quiet!” he said to the lot of them in their pricey new Manhattan skyscraper office, and like the obedient forever-students they’d always been, they immediately shut up.

(photo c/o loving new york)

(To be continued?)

“Generous Terms” by John Zedolik

NEW POETRY

Should I have expected to get

the Andrew Jacksons back from those

requesting my generosity on dark

Saturday nights upon unpeopled streets

and perhaps danger too lightly noted

in pride of bodily strength and city smarts

not smart enough to sense the scam

so still not seeing those twenties even

giving my address and a decade and more

for the repayment and confirmation

of good faith on the parts of those blank

middle-agers mostly likely in opiate need

greater than mine for the bills

long transmuted to magic killing pills

no longer possible, anyway, to collect

on the debt, so I settle for everlasting I.O.U.s.

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.