Author: collabnovel

“To the Editor” by Nancy Byrne Iannucci

NEW POETRY

TO THE EDITOR

who ends a pretty

rejection note

with Please Keep Writing,

I want to tell you

that it is like telling coneflowers

to keep blooming

or the sun to keep burning.

For 4.603 billion years,

the sun’s been clouded,

eclipsed, covered in spots,

called a yellow dwarf,

and still,

it shines on like a Pink Floyd crazy diamond,

heating to nourish,

renewing with fire,

just like my pen.

XXXXXXX

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a librarian and poet who lives with her two cats: Nash and Emily Dickinson.  San Pedro River Review, 34 Orchard, Defenestration, Hobo Camp Review, Bending Genres, The Mantle, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Glass: a Poetry Journal are some of the places you will find her. She is the author of four chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018), Goblin Fruit (Impspired, 2021), Primitive Prayer (Plan B Press, fall 2022), and Hummingbirds and Cigarettes (forthcoming via Bottlecap Press). Visit her at www.nancybyrneiannucci.com  Instagram: @nancybyrneiannucci

An Excerpt from “Millennia After Millennia After Millennia” by Zach Smith

April 6, 8744 BC

Dhakk and his tribe had been tracking a herd of woolly mammoths across the frozen plains and onto a thin muddy strip of land with vast cold ocean on either side. 

It was Dhakk’s first hunt. His father had spoken of frozen oceans before, vast snow-covered, just a little too perfectly flat, that you could feel the rise and fall of the water beneath the ice as though it were breathing land. 

Those stories never mentioned how muddy the land was.

The hunt was a success until they tried to return west to the Far East.

As the first loaves of bread were being broken with friends, and the virginal soil of other new farms was being broken by farmers in the fertile crescent, and the Jomon were breaking the wilds of Honshu, Dhakk watched as the land bridge from Russia to Alaska was broken into a hundred islands by the warm rising waters.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Indescribable” by Daniel Suter

NEW POETRY

If ink flowed through my veins
and I had quills for fingers
if I had all the words
that were ever said or written
still,
I could not describe you

If colors burst from my heart
the universe my canvas
if I had seen the whole world
imagined everything there is
still,
I could not paint you

If I sang like an angel
and played every instrument
if I heard heaven’s melody
and felt the rhythm of the earth
still,
I could not sing of you.

Daniel Suter lives and writes in Beirut, Lebanon. He teaches English through a local NGO and has been involved in starting and growing several poetry initiatives aimed at bridging sectarian divides and creating community that inspires change. He loves collecting personal narratives at storiesthatmatter.online, brainwashing his kids to enjoy great literature and occasionally overdosing on Espresso. You can connect with him at @suterstories.

“Charcoal Blues” by Ken Kakareka

NEW POETRY

(c/o diningtokitchendotcom)

inclusivity
has fucked up
a lot of shit.
everyone’s
a comedian
now.
i bet
that doesn’t
fair well
with the greats
who’ve worked
20 yrs.
to earn
their stakes.
soon,
everyone
will be
a poet.
can you
imagine?
it takes
a specific type
to be
a poet.
you have
to be
a true loner
at heart.
you have to
wrestle with
your soul
& drink
everything
under
& beyond
the sun.
you have to
wage war
with Life
& Death
not to
end up
in between.

Ken Kakareka’s latest novel is Summer of Irresponsibility (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His words have appeared or are on their way in numerous rags including Gargoyle Magazine, The Gorko Gazette, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. A list of selected publications can be found at kenkakareka.com.

An Excerpt from “Growing Up Is Hard to Do” by Nick Gallup

NEW FICTION ALERT

The home-coming dance was that night. As I took my after-game shower, I fantasized about the hero’s welcome I would receive at the dance. First, people would praise me for recognizing the sneaky pass play our opponent had tried to pull on us; second, they would be pounding me on the back for making the heads-up interception; and third, they would be ecstatic at the skillful way I threw a lateral to Kenny Myers to win the game.  

Instead… 

…Instead, everyone laughed at me when I showed up at the dance. 

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Man Shouts” by James Croal Jackson

NEW POETRY

all the balloons were sent back
living God in front of the bomb

the strawberry rotates like a peak
at the end of an agreement

I want to talk about the wisdom of the tree
angel branch

efforts to incur God

now we are surprised at the link
back to the driver’s head in high grass

I will believe in heaven in the apocalypse
in war with understanding

is a falling nuclear bomb.

(photo from health.usnews)

James Croal Jackson edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com) This is his fifth appearance at Fast Pop Lit.

“Casino” by James Croal Jackson

NEW POETRY

(photo c/o lasvegas.co.tz)

My head is an avalanche

and you are the sparrow

(sorrow) at the foot

of the bed. I’m sorry

for bringing the casino

to work & developing

that further. Slots slots

slots slots slots. If

your heart’s a roulette

may I have another

spin? Another evening

aiming a slingshot

into green glass bottles

on my sister’s balanced

head. No one said

this was a good idea,

but I keep clinking

coins into slots

beneath heavy

constellations

of lights. I

declare the world

my next-of-kin.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, Vilas Avenue, and *82 Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

This is his fourth appearance at Fast Pop Lit, with another poem soon to come.

An Excerpt from “Vacation Home” by Andrew Arasimowicz

NEW FICTION ALERT

I could hear the storm outside in the night. But a crack in the fire told me I Am Here, and I remained on the couch. Warm. Safe. Secure. At last with my privacy.

I was in that blissful state of living with my mind dead when the knocking began. It took me a bit to come back here. To debt, betrayal, and aging. I thought it was either a tree branch or dumb animal at first. Banging against the front from the wind or instinct.

The continued knocking corrected me. And it just grew louder, refusing to follow any rhythm to let me nod back to daydreams. It was a noise outside my peace. And I could only grumble in anger. Did not this would-be Voorhees know how much I suffered? Did he not know how much I needed this little away from it all? Here I was; finally enjoying the solitude I’d been planning for months, and in the peace of near slumber comes this KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Which Hemingway?

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

IN ANY study and celebration of Ernest Hemingway, his life and writings, the question becomes: Which period? Which of his writings? Which stories, novels, or books are most representative of the writer, the man, the myth?

Young Hemingway burst on the scene age 26 in 1925 with his first and best novel, The Sun Also Rises, the style and sensibility fully developed thanks to an arduous apprenticeship in craft and life. Sun is the ultimate travelogue and extended drinking binge, climaxed in Pamplona, Spain when bulls, bullfighters, metaphors and under-the-surface conflicts break out amid the best descriptions of being drunk ever written. Sharp clarity of memory– at the time the style was revolutionary.

Many prefer his prior minimalist in our time/In Our Time vignettes and stories. Few readers like two very bad, often-embarrassing later novels. Two other impressively titled novels– you know them– accentuated his fame.

After ups and downs including the hazards of celebrity, and multiple spouses, Ernest pulled things together with a popular novella, The Old Man and the Sea, containing some much-denied Faulkneresque Christian imagery. For many of us, the first readable-and-compelling introduction to the guy. Led to his 1954 Nobel Prize.

Reflections on the Twenties, A Moveable Feast, is good albeit not notably better than similar excursions of score-settling by Robert McAlmon and John Glassco.

FOR ME, the apex of Hemingway’s art are two Esquire magazine short stories of the 1930s. He toys with structure in both of them: with “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” more obviously. In “The Short, Happy LIfe of Francis Macomber” the seams aren’t showing, as Hemingway artfully switches viewpoints– even stepping briefly into the head of a lion– toward building to an unsurpassed climax. The best short story ever written? The most impressive, and short of a tale by little-known Richard Connell, the most exciting. Excitement with meaning and impact– we’re never completely certain of the “Why?” of what happened.

Those two stories blew me away when I first read them– and shouldn’t that be the objective of all writing?

-K.W.

(famous Yousuf Karsh photograph)

END 2024 HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL

“the critics” by Ken Kakareka

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

(photo c/o National Book Critics Circle)

they say
that writers
don’t play,
that’s why
they make
such great
observers.
like the
impotent
jake barnes
in the sun
also rises.
well
let me
tell you
something.
writers play.
i’ve stuck
my beak
in depths of
squishy kiwi
and tasted
the sweet,
the sour,
the ripened
and
the bitter.
i’ve snorted,
drank,
and fucked
everything
west of
the sun
and
sat with
the lamest
of ducks
at dead
wine bars
listening to
drowning
conversations,
and i’ve
walked
the walk
at old joints
in new orleans
where what
barflies say
jumps off
the walls
like frogs
off lilies.
so i can
tell you
that writers
play more
than anyone.
don’t believe
the critics –
they’re
the ones
who don’t
play.

See also Ken Kakareka’s other feature in this year’s Hemingway Festival, “Old Bull.”