new litmags

“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

“Old Bull” by Kenneth Kakareka

NEW POETRY

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

(photo c/o thinkstock)

the sun
also rises
was always
my favorite
book.
in the spirit
of going
to paris
at the end
of summer
i decided
to read it
again.
halfway thru
i slapped
the book
shut
and roared
all the way
back
to the 20s.
but it wasn’t
hemingway’s wit
that made me
laugh.
up until
now
his writing
seemed
intangibly
majestic.
for the
first time
i felt like
i could hang
in the ring
with him
punch
for punch.
maybe
not win,
but hang.
he was 26
when he wrote
the sun…
i’m 36.
but an
old bull
has just
as much
fervor
and perhaps
more danger
than a
young bull
when he’s
raring to go.

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.

Why Hemingway Matters

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

TODAY it takes historical perspective to realize Ernest Hemingway was the most important literary modernist of the 20th Century. Whoever’s #2 isn’t close.

Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound were there before him– huge influences on his work. It took Ernest Hemingway to use their insights and innovations to create truly compelling new work which engaged the greater reading public. If experimentation is just for a tiny circle of aficionados, what’s the point?

What were the modernist insights?

One of them surely was that less is more. As with impressionist painting, you don’t need to describe every minute aspect of a scene or event. A few striking details is enough. Our brains fill in the rest. We need some description of course– but it needs to be artfully handled.

Several studies show, for instance, that presenting too many choices causes the brain to tune out. (Here’s one article about it.)

YET what do we get from, say, a Don Delillo? An endless recitation of data. The ethos of this age. Data! And ever more of it. Sentences piled upon sentences. Information and more information. This isn’t art, but the absence of art.

(Something’s loaded down alright, and I kinda think it’s the narrative.)

AS his writing style engaged the public, Ernest Hemingway engaged the world– via wars, traveling, hunting, fishing, boxing, partying– and in the process created the classic Hemingway persona.

(photo c/o cooperhemingway.com)

He became that most horrific of literary animals– a celebrity! (Gasps from the status quo intellectual crowd.) For a brief period of time, writers mattered. Literature mattered– was at the center of society and the world, as it clearly isn’t now.

-Karl Wenclas

Ad For Contemporary Artist Wannabes

by Zoé Mahfouz

Do you wish you could molest and kill women? Torture animals? Torment babies? Express your cannibalistic urges? Do you have troubles with mental institutions calling you back in? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

Discover Contemporary Art, where the nobodies can become somebody with a bunch of baloney!

You no longer need talent like Monet and paint your garden 30 times to be displayed in museums! You can now put your own dump in a can and sell it in an art auction in Milan for 300,000 dollars! 

But above all, you’ll finally have an excuse for all your sadistic impulses! 

Stopping your vehicle on the highway to take pictures of car accidents?

Blame it on the art!

Staging a hundred ways to torture babies like throwing them in the air, putting them in cages, ovens and choking them?

Blame it on the art!

Burning people’s bodies on purpose? 

Blame it on the art!

Vitriolizing photos of women icons you know you could never get in your bed? 

Blame it on the art!

Have you ever felt like cutting dead animals in half and putting them in containers filled with formaldehyde, inspired by the careers of many serial killers? Have you ever considered benefiting from a genocide by stealing ashes from Holocaust victims and turning them into a painting? Or making meatballs out of your own liposuction fat and eating them in public in a gallery? Well, you’ve knocked on the right door! With Contemporary Art, your perversions are fairly rewarded! Who cares about the antipsychotics and the mood stabilizers, when you can sell a crucifix statue immersed in your own urine at a Sotheby’s auction in London for 145,000 dollars?  

And if someone asks you the meaning behind your work, do not forget to use our usual catchphrase : “It’s the reflection of a dysfunctional society”!

Contemporary Art, turn your depravity into an ATM!

XXX

Writer’s bio : 
Writer who randomly bursts into improvised musical numbers when she is alone at home, then pretends to be emotional when the imaginary audience gives her a standing ovation. Also likes to kidnap the neighbor’s cat to make TikTok’s and complains when he throws up on her terrace. 

Zoé Mahfouz
TikTok @Lessautesdhumeurdezoe

7 Questions Every Literary Historian Should Be Able to Answer

SEVEN LITERARY QUESTIONS

1.) Who was the most influential post-World War II American novelist?

2.) Which famed literary publication was founded with Random House money as a corporate ad vehicle during a major newspaper strike?

3.) Which canonical author’s cousin headed a Cold War CIA-front arts organization designed to steer literature into safe directions?

4.) Which innovative writer was once left by American soldiers in a cage on an airport tarmac in the hot sun, for hours?

5.) Which American populist novelist, forerunner of the Beats, went from being an acclaimed author to writing screenplays for low-budget monster movies?

6.) Which literary critic, after writing a scathing article in the Atlantic about the pretentiousness of American literary fiction, received a torrent of vitriol and denunciations from book reviewers, novelists, and corporate publishing power brokers? (The person currently lives in South Korea.)

7.) Which over-the-top pulp novel was praised by both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud for exploring realms of the unconscious?

(Please give your answers below.)