distinctive writing

Human Innovation

Our assistant editor and style consultant, Kathleen M. Crane, to me as we watched the original 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway version of “The Thomas Crown Affair”:

“This reminds me of The Loud Boys.”

Near the beginning of the film, plot events happen simultaneously. The movie uses extreme split-screen techniques of the kind first shown at the 1967 Montreal Worlds Fair. No doubt it works best on giant movie screens. The film– influenced by the French New Wave and by neo-noir films like “Point Blank”– was trying to be the epitome of editing, design, and style. A worthy objective.

IS THAT our objective at New Pop Lit?

WHY INNOVATE?

In this mad accelerated world with everything in a state of flux, literature has no choice but to innovate, or become little more than a handful of arrogant monks in a remote monastery on the edge of civilization– a few last holdouts– while what remains of the publishing world is a trash mountain of generic, AI-generated bot books pushed out by the mirror-imaged “Big Five,” which based on how closely they resemble one another in structure, mentality, staffs and output is really a Big One.

(image c/o The New Yorker.)

Never have more choices been offered, with every choice exactly the same.

The only real choice in 2025?

To stand out!

Which we’ve begun doing using multidimensional writing combined with a hyper-pop vibe, as demonstrated in the novella, The Loud Boys. Available here.

-Karl Wenclas

“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.

“Ad Break” by Haoyi Zhang

SHORT PROSE

The coffee-toffee-caramel of my hot liquid handwarm looks luscious. It is also the exact same hex-code shade as the last nub of supermarket mudcake, resting on an A4 exercise book receipt book book book poetry books to-do list book tower on desk. I gnaw and gobble at both, sticky fingers returning to the clacker palette.

It is the witching hour, ideal for tickling my muses. Beyond my window sash, distant cicadas float in the black pool of night.

This is an appreciation letter to all the owly writers chained to their desks: your lit mag publications will fill up your bios but not your growling hearts (or egos). Get yourself a friend not for listening to you air your novel ideas or read at that gross anarchist bookstore, no. Someone who likes talking to people at the park, believes life is good and yes, helps you unclench so the words finally start flowing from your lips.

Touch grass. Get stung by a wasp. Bite the sun.

Haoyi Zhang is a reluctant student at FASS USyd and hopes to poem good for Cordite one-time this livin’. Drag them out for kebab + walks. Off all socials except Discord: @open_far

Science Fiction– Or Fact?

A SNEAK PREVIEW EXCERPT OF AN UPCOMING STORY BY ZACH SMITH


I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, said Xarlox, as he reached out a beam of energy, that by a certain definition could be described as a hand, toward the probe.

Welcome home.

This relatively little rock, out in the vast outskirts of your solar system, this almost insignificant ball of ice, could be your final resting place.

It has been a long time for you at least. One hundred ten years since you were born, eighty-six years since your discovery, nineteen years since your death. Earth years I should say, less than half a year for this planet.

(Part of a feature story appearing soon at New Pop Lit.)

The New AI Consumer

Some tech geek out there wannabe startup tech bro is actually selling an AI pen. That’s what he’s advertising it as anyway. I guess it’ll do your handwriting for you, on those rare occasions you need to write anything by hand.

photo of an actual tech geek


Next up: An AI prompter. Having to think about what your AI botbook novel will be about is too mentally stressful. I mean, if the chatbot does all of the writing and most of the thinking for your literary masterpiece, why can’t it do all of it? Makes sense, right? I mean, what are you paying for, or not paying for? You’re using it, aren’t you? Should be enough.

Soon they’ll have AI shopping, done by algorithms. No shopping list required. The bots will know what you need and want. Transport will be provided by AI cars– autonomous, they’re called– which you won’t really need, because everything will be delivered to you by autonomous trucks, manned, I guess, by robots. I’m not making this up. Automakers and tech companies have invested billions in the premise. It’s coming soon. I promise.

When the groceries are delivered, there will be AI stoves to do the cooking for you. And AI dishwashers. Then AI laundry, and AI robots to make your bed and vacuum the carpeting. Modern conveniences, for your own good. So you’ll have more leisure time for, you know. Something. Sitting on the sofa watching television, or smoking pot. Vegging out. Or sleeping. It’s always pleasant to close the blinds on the world and go to sleep. Then in the morning the AI alarm clock will wake you and your coffee will be ready and you’ll be ready for– I don’t know. Another day.

It’s all in the works, believe me.


-KW

“Peeve” by John Zedolik



a poem

(We’ll be running three other poems by John upcoming soon as a feature at the New Pop Lit site.)


Pull that hangnail rising like a flag

flapping in a breeze of non-concern

though catching my eye like a barbed

hook replete with rankling hairs so not

letting my attention go, but racking it

with the thought of tear and blood

—the anxiety in anticipating when it will rip—

and pain the owner—who might then regret

his indolence and indifference when more

raw flesh breathes the new air in crimson

exposure as the finger-end resembles more rag

than bone I silently urged him to not leave alone.


XXX

(We’ll give John’s bio when we run his other three poems. This is a Sneak Preview. We can tell you that John appears in our print zeen, Extreme Zeen Two, still available at the POP SHOP.)

“What Happened At Drake’s”



by Lukas Tallent



—Now, my dear, tell me what you saw.

—There were fireworks in their eyes, and smoke from their mouths hovered visibly in the room. They both had drinks, brightly-colored and in tall fizzy glasses. He was talking to her, and she was leaning forward, her arms on the table, taken it seemed. The others in the bar were lost in their own dramas and excuses and relaxers and sports games and chicken wings and sliders and sushi and—

—That’s enough about the food. Tell me, my dear, what did you hear?

—Moans and sighs and laughter, but from their table:

“Would you like something…more expensive?”

“Or alcoholic, you mean?”

“Yes, that’s typically the case.”

She paused and looked to the ceiling.

“I’m trying to not do something stupid.”

“Like?”

“Like tell you about my last boyfriend, or go home with you.”

—Oh, my dear, what did you think?

—It wasn’t stupid. I thought about Greg and Amanda, about how he jumpstarted my car that night at McDonald’s and how she said I could do so much better, how everyone thought we would get together someday, then I thought about where we all are now and how far that is from what we wanted, and I thought I might ought to order something expensive.

—Poor dear, what did you smell?

—Smoke and sauces and lingering antiperspirant, the bartender, his glossy red hair and beard, matted with sweat, had damp stains under his arms as he shoveled ice into more of the tall glasses and poured from the silver shaker over the ice and slid the result in front of me.

“Try that.”

—And what about the taste, my dear?

—Bitter and sweet and cold and fruity and fizzy and warm and . . . suddenly, the bartender was no longer six foot tall, but knee-height and wearing a green coat and raspberry beret. We weren’t in the bar but standing on the edge of a cliff, so high we couldn’t see the bottom for the clouds. He said, “I am the Beave, if you can believe, and you are nothing more than a sieve.”

—My dear, what did you feel?

—The condensation on my glass, still cold, and . . . on the precipice. “You must choose,” the Beave said, “no one is going to ask you to go further, no one is here to push you,” and with that, he checked his watch and wrinkled his nose, and once again we were in the bar, and my drink was gone, and the bartender came over to ask if I was ready close out.

I nodded. He went to find my card.

The couple were long gone. I imagined that he helped her into her coat, and maybe she let him hold her hand as they left, but really, from there, it was whatever you wanted to make of them.

XXX

Lukas Tallent lives in New York City. His work has recently appeared in Door is A Jar, Maudlin House, Bright Flash Literary Review, and many other places. You can find more of him at lukas-tallent.com.

Two Prose Poems by Brian Pilling

the daily grind

The other woman, half-crazed in a check-out line at the 7-11, yells at the clerk, “SPEAK ENGLISH!” Laughter falls out of the sky when Gloria Estefan’s “Bad Boy” plays, then fades to silence, replaced by the whirling blades of the ubiquitous news chopper following traffic onto the interstate. The camera focused on the sixth high-speed chase of the month. Within minutes it is over, spike strips flattening all four tires. Suddenly the camera jolts to the right, picking up a convertible, the other woman’s head in her lover’s lap, the car swerving left and right, slowing and picking up speed—a familiar rhythm. The chopper hovers over the golden arches, where the lovers, now famished, sit in the drive-up line, delayed by a distraught child’s grandparents who just explode like a happy meal’s wind-up toy wound too tight—their order missing its fries and the cheap plastic toy. Grandpa pulls his semi- automatic Sig Sauer on the high schooler who screwed things up. Thoughts and prayers in waiting, like wrapped-up hamburgers on warming plates.

ZAP, NORTH DAKOTA

A pimple faced teenager is rifling through boxes of books at his neighbor’s garage sale. He looks over his reading list for the upcoming school year. His neighbor, a dangerous sounding woman wearing a winter jacket with a fake fur collar and metallic copper makeup, haggles over the price of an old toaster oven. Momentarily distracted by the boy, she pulls the list from his hand. She says, “you won’t find those here,” and returns the paper while wagging her other finger. “Nothing you should be reading either, if I have anything to say about it.” He quickly stuffs the list into his back pocket. “You tell your mama I’m running for school board and I’ll be counting on her vote.”

XXX

Brian Pilling has been published in The Main Street Rag, The Berkshire Review, Down In The Dirt, The Droplet Journal, Missive Magazine, and other literary journals. His chapbook The Poet’s Struggle is published by Bottlecap Press. Brian is a recent winner in The Cape Cod Times poetry contest.