fast pop lit

“There Where the Weather” by Christopher Landrum

NEW POETRY

(photo c/o ancientpages.com)

The pages of sages

Down through the ages

Are plucked ripe with luck and Logos by mages

Who then hand unfair fistfuls of gifts to readers most unusually unsquare,

Containing uncanny answers for listening listeners who dare:

Answers dressed in pinstriped ribbons and gild-paper wrapping

That (once ripped open) tap into a kind of magical (but muddled) time travel

Full of hap, riddles, and knots to unravel

By those lost in the love of farming

Fresh vines grown from wild languages

Amid all uncertainties, tangles, and anguishes,

Farmed there where the weather marks the least of all changes.

Christopher Landrum’s story “The Age of Insomnia” was featured at our main site. He lives in Austin, Texas and writes about what he reads at Bookbread.com.

An Excerpt from “Where the Rivers Meet” by Becky Tuch

NEW FICTION ALERT

Somewhere in the supermarket her daughter has gone to fetch toilet paper. They are supposed to be stocking up on supplies, items Erika has never had before in her life—canned milk, dehydrated meats, freeze-dried vegetables. Astronaut food, as if the whole country were about to shoot off into space.

And perhaps it is. The speaker overhead is playing Dido’s “White Flag”— “I will go down with this ship”—and the glistening floor is lined with social-distance markers. Arrows in each aisle direct customers one way or the other to avoid passing face-to-face. Every customer wears a mask; some of the cashiers wear plexiglas face guards.

Erika might not have come to the supermarket at all, were it not for the city-wide panic, a sudden rush for provisions. The stores were so overwhelmed she’d been unable to get an appointment for food delivery. At any rate, she felt funny about ordering food from home, sending others off to risk themselves on her behalf. Were some lives more expendable than others?

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Nobel Irrelevance

A RANT

(photo c/o worldmagzine)

ANOTHER YEAR almost gone, another Nobel literature prize winner nobody’s heard of, who by all accounts writes “poetic prose,” a phrase which seems a nod by commentators toward the literary, to affirm among themselves (they speak for no one else) “she’s one of us.” She’s previously won the Booker Prize and probably other awards within today’s tiny literary world.

Yes, it’s a laudable event, plucking a dedicated writer from general obscurity and giving that person attention– good for the person; the writer– but for what after all is a glorified PR campaign it’s a failure. Part of consistent failure. PR without purpose. Is Han Kang a more compelling winner than last year’s winner? No doubt. That’s not enough.

Literature’s footprint in the culture is not increased a centimeter. Instead it continues to shrink. Relative to all else it shrinks, because the rest of the world’s noise– from politics, podcasts and polemics to Twitter and Tik-Tok, music and sports– speeds ahead like an expanding universe while the literary art stands still. Stuck. Trapped. An art of the imagination, allegedly, yet no one in credentialed levels of the literary realm has imagined a new idea– aesthetically or commercially– in decades. The same-old obsolete layers of overstaffed institutions and hierarchies. Ivy League academies and Big Five-sustained publicists and agents, akin to 19th century Central European bureaucrats receiving chests full of medals for moving stacks of jargon-filled paper around. Awards as tokens of appreciation for existing, while accomplishing nothing.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s not this.

-Karl Wenclas

“unprocessed thoughts” by Bach Le

NEW POETRY

photo c/o dogsaddict

why is that dog biting its owner is it the chains and ropes that pull the shepherd to a suicidal thought or is it the man that harasses his friend to test if he can manipulate the docility of an animal but look the blood is pouring out like droplets of watercolor paints that used to impregnate my xs-sized tee and now it’s there but only darker and sadder i would laugh my stomach out when red pours out because it’s a dumb mistake but now why is the dog so unhesitant and merciless towards its owner the old man that walks it everyday cares for it baths it in the pouring rain despite his asthma and gives it a little bow in its chest is it tamed is it a disguised wolf why is it now lying on the floor growling rolling screaming and the man is running with crimson traces in his route and something in his hand like a folded story he wants no one to know about?

Bach Le is currently living and studying in Hanoi, Vietnam. His poems have previously been in Synchronized Chaos, Haikuniverse, and more. Through poetry, Bach hopes to give voice to different issues in society, as well as showing his attitudes towards life with its various dimensions.



An Excerpt from “The Memorial” by Brent King

NEW FICTION ALERT

He came because he had a “lump” at the injection site. I finally got him to pull his pants down, after I offered the usual bribe, turkey sandwich and a fruit cup, and I saw it immediately, an arterial pseudoaneurysm as big and red as a fresh plum. He missed the vein and damaged the wall of the artery. I touched it as gently as I could, and felt the blood pulsing through my gloves before he shoved my hand away.

“That fuckin’ hurts, man.”

“Look, Tim,” I said, hoping to scare him just enough to make him take it seriously, “you’ve got a weak spot in the wall of your femoral artery. It could rupture at any moment. If it does you’ll bleed out in a few minutes. I need to get an ultrasound of it and get the vascular surgeons to see you. I think you’re going to need an operation.”

“Just give me something for the fuckin’ pain,” he said, “and I want another san-which.”

I knew I couldn’t give Tim a sandwich. The surgeons were going to be mad enough about the first one, but I knew him well enough to know it wasn’t the time to explain or argue. That could wait until we figured out what to do. But Tim had a new nurse that day, and she didn’t know him, hadn’t learned how to redirect him when he started making demands. So, when he asked for ginger ale and she told him, in a matter-of-fact way, that we didn’t have any, he said “Fuck you, bitch.” He tore off his hospital gown and threw it at her. Then he stormed out of the ER, cursing us all the way to the door.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

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.