new litmags

“Sketch Rex” by Perry Genovesi

NEW FICTION

c/o Andy Warhol

Dinner’s been tomato soup for so long and the red-ringed bowls are piling up in the sink. Santana sits with a green and white checkered quilt on their lap and winds their finger around a tassel. The Victrola is turned off and the light is a dim flypaper-yellow.

It’s Sunday night and they were considering a walk or a drive, something special before the week starts. They want to don their blue newsboy cap, visit the Boulevard to watch the young people sitting on the benches downtown, smoking by the statue of the giant granite head. A cold thought like wet paper towel presses itself against their face and snakes out their eyes.

There are no more creative thoughts inside the dome of their scalp. Before, ideas broadcasted in an arc. Some were neon. On those nights, the inside of their head resembled the Boulevard; there were so many thoughts. Now there are few and they’re all wet paper towel. These weak thoughts slurp around the perimeter of their skull. One shambles to the top of their head’s underside and then collapses like a broken roller coaster. Santana thinks of Rex, who used to rest atop the checkered quilt and chase his tail, clean himself, and curl up.


A red-cold thought crawls inside Santana’s bulbous nose. They search for the neon ones, but those all ran away with Rex. Rex would move from the quilt to the couch and finally to the rocking chair with its mothholey teal cushions, and sleep. And Santana would lie on the carpet to draw him. Sketchpad pointed to the chair, shirt riding up so their bare stomach brushes the rug, one hand on the marker. Sometimes they’d turn on the Victrola to listen to popular vocal music. Santana would draw the lines in Rex’s face. And for the rest of the night, a network of neon thoughts would brood around Rex. What color for his nose? Should it be as red as tomato soup? Santana rises to turn on the Victrola but pauses when they hear, by the door, a faint scratching.

Perry Genovesi lives in West Philadelphia, works as a public librarian, and serves his fellow workers in AFSCME District Council 47. He’s a ’24 Best Microfiction nominee, and his published fiction is forthcoming or has been featured in Eclectica, BULL, Vol.1 Brooklyn, and collected on tiny.cc/PerryGenovesi. Unfortunately for his admirers, he needs to be validated every 5 minutes & told he’s doing a great job or he shuts down. Twitter: @unionlibrarian 

An Excerpt from “The Spector Wept” by James Lee

And now we hang the jestors wreath

When peace doth dwell throughout the land

And beast will eat from mortals hand

All oceans will merge into the sands

And death and life will merge as one

All black will darken the brightest sun

Blood in veins no longer run

The Spectors work is finally done

XXX

“The Spector Wept” and another poem by James Lee are COMING SOON— to New Pop Lit!




Caitlin Clark and the Elements of a Game

(AP photo Hans Pennink)

BY SHOOTING BASKETS from farther out than any other player today is doing– farther than few have ever shot them– Caitlin Clark has changed the elements of the game she plays. In so doing, she’s raised the profile of women’s college basketball dramatically– and her own.

Seeing clips of her sharpshooting, I’m reminded of the Wild West’s Annie Oakley, who could defeat any man at target shooting. I’m reminded that women are better at threading needles. It’s possible that women are slightly better at some aspects of manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

“Nonsense!” you exclaim. “Plenty of men shoot the basketball as well as Caitlin Clark!”

To which I could reply, “Where are they?”

The reason we don’t see such long-range sharpshooting from men– with rare exceptions like Steph Curry– is because the elements of the mens game militate against it. Meaning, the priority given to unusual size and strength. There may indeed be 100 or more six-feet tall men who can shoot the basketball as well as Caitlin. Maybe more than 100. But few if any make it to the big time.

ELEMENTS

Change the rules or elements of any game and you change the importance of any one element, and thereby increase or decrease the game’s level of excitement. This was seen in baseball with the advent of “Moneyball,” with priority given to batters who either hit a home run or strike out, above players who hit for high average, get on base a lot, and steal bases. So what we see now when watching baseball games is not the hit-and-run drama of old, but occasional home runs punctuating an endless series of high pitch-count walks and strikeouts. A few seconds of action amid a whole lot of boredom.

Similar has happened in other sports, for good or ill. The National Football League changed its rules some years ago to favor the quarterback, which led to more passing, more scoring, more aerial excitement. They changed the elements of the game. Not a surprise that NFL football surpassed baseball as America’s most watched sport, and never looked back.

A DIFFERENT GAME

What does this have to do with literature, ostensibly the subject of this site?

At New Pop Lit we believe the short story (and then the novel) can be changed by changing its elements, and how much emphasis is put on any one element. Well-known is that in writing programs, emphasis is placed on “the well-written sentence,” as if that’s all that’s involved in writing a story. Much else is involved– which is why we believe the form can be radically changed. Improved. Made faster, deeper, and more exciting.

My co-editor Kathleen M. Crane is back writing short fiction again, after a substantial break. She’s a Hemingway acolyte, in that she writes with extreme clarity, “like seeing pebbles in a brook,” in Hemingway’s phrase. Except KMC writes with perhaps more compassion for the subjects of her tales.

As for myself, I’ve identified ten elements of short stories which I’m out to include or emphasize– or experiment with– in my own short fiction projects. I’ve mentioned two of them previously: multiple viewpoints, and non-linearity. With eight other elements to work on, I should be able to produce writing which looks wholly new– a kind of new literary work never before seen.

At least, that’s the thinking.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “The Big Time” by Robert Bozic

EXCERPT FROM A CHAPTER IN A MEMOIR

It was all incredible to me. Just five years earlier, I was homeless, sleeping on the streets of Toronto, and now I was gearing up to fight at Madison Square Garden. Word had spread among my old high school friends, who, despite being in college and tied up with summer jobs, managed to wrangle a couple of days off to witness the fight. A few of them, thrilled at the idea of attending a match in New York, hastily organized a road trip.

Three days before the main event, Chuvalo, his entourage, and mine (which, at this point, comprised only Bev, my trainer, and myself, as Bertie and a couple of Lansdowne guys were coming in for just one night) arrived in New York. We all checked into the New Yorker Hotel, a venerable establishment nestled on Seventh Avenue between 33rd and 34th Street. It stood just south of what was arguably the seediest area in New York City, quite possibly in the entire United States. This neighborhood was infamous for its porn shops, strip joints, and a mix of greasy eateries like the original Tad’s Steakhouse, sprawling northward up to 43rd Street, where the Broadway Theatres began. On the southern border lay Eighth Avenue, home to the main bus terminal, Port Authority. Within a block or two of the Port Authority, a series of the most desolate-looking hotels offered rooms by the hour.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Interview: David Wayne Stewart

1.)  Which country is more divided right now, Canada or the United States?

Political discourse is coarsening everywhere these days, but polarization seems dangerously pronounced here in the U.S. Our current moment reminds me of the Quebec separatist era of my childhood, which was also marked by the hyper-politicization of issues that had previously been uncontroversial, set against an urban-rural divide. In the end, Canada sleepwalked its way to a constitutional crisis that almost tore the country apart. Perhaps Americans can look to that Canadian story as a cautionary tale.

2.)  What’s Canada’s best asset?

Despite its fraught history as a colonial nation, Canada has shown a more recent capacity to acknowledge and reckon with its past wrongs. The Spicer Commission’s town halls during the Quebec Constitutional crisis of the 1990s, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools of the early 2000s, are examples of the Canadian government listening to people’s concerns, and creating a historical record of injustice in pursuit of collective healing and social change. These experiences are cultural assets that will serve Canada in the decades to come as it continues to welcome immigrants and transition to a more knowledge-based economy.

3.)  Who’s your favorite hockey team?

As a kid in small-town Quebec, I used to walk home from school through cold and snow and immediately change into my favorite red, white, and blue hockey sweater with a number 10 on the back — the jersey of my childhood idol, Guy Lafleur. To this day, I remain a dyed-in-the-wool Montreal Canadiens fan.

NOW read David’s essay at New Pop Lit: “New to Class”

Are Arts Critics Pretentious?

photo of Dwight Macdonald c/o Bettmann-Corbis

THAT WAS THE QUESTION making the rounds on social media this past weekend as a video parody of snobby film critics circulated on Tik Tok and Twitter.

BUT: Is pretentiousness a fair criticism? Seeing that synonyms of “pretentious” include “affected” and “ostentatious,” I’d guess yes— based on quick looks at a couple essays by literary critics at New Left Review, of all places.

First is this one, by Hermione Hoby:

Here’s another fast glimpse of another essay from the same venue, this one by Leo Robson:

Clear-thinking criticism or pseudo-intellectual blather?

The reason I pulled the excerpts from New Left Review, is because at a “leftist” journal, certainly, is where you’d expect to find writing accessible to ordinary workers– to millions of curious readers from all areas of society eager to find writing they can agree, or disagree, with, and sometimes be moved by. Passion! Polemics! Opinions!! WHY NOT?

Instead they get exercises in intellectualism, from former university students who never left the classroom– or the classroom never left them. They’re still writing for professors or dissertation committees, or for other inside-the-box, don’t-make-waves thinkers just like them.

Pretentious? You bet!

-Karl Wenclas

The Importance of Contention

ONE OF the reasons the literary scene today excites no one is there’s no genuine debate, much less dissent, much less contentious no-holds-barred free-for-all argument. Instead: “We’re all good.” “I’m okay, you’re okay.”

THIS APPLIES at all levels, high and low– but is most notable among the prestigious literary crowd. They think: What’s prestigious about unloosening your metaphorical bow tie, jumping off your high-horse stage and engaging face-to-face nose-to-nose with the audience?

That was the strategy utilized by pro wrestling (egads! literati exclaim) to grow from a marginalized weirdo spectator “exhibition” non-sport to a central cultural phenomenon. Mad interviews. Good guys and bad guys. Storylines. Personalities.

Elements of a strategy which was borrowed successfully, to a far more modest extent, by what soon-enough surpassed sleepy baseball as America’s #1 sport: the National Football League, aided by an upstart cable network named ESPN. Analysts and panelists dissecting disagreeing comparing pro-and-con aspects who’s #1, who’s starting, what’s your team coaches players doing WRONG have to reform do better refine those tactics or you’ll be buried by better teams, better players.

The literary game? The lit game has sucked since the Beats. Today: nearly comatose literary poets reciting in delicate voices making zero eye contact staring rigidly at a sheet of paper, no interaction, negative energy, the audience listening politely, falling asleep– the same genteel world that raucous upstarts of the Underground Literary Alliance invaded before they were frozen out by mob boss mandarins while simultaneously the recession of 2008-09 knocked half their number into couch surfing, or sleeping in inoperable pickup trucks, or vagabonding on the streets.

Needed: Energy! Disagreement. Raised voices of outrage saying, “Our work, ourselves, our art, our voices MATTER!” Enough to fight for. Or over. THEN the general public will take notice.

-Karl Wenclas

(One forum for debate and disagreement will soon be the Maximum Literature popcast. See the first test episode here. We’re seeking guests; participants. If you have recommendations or suggestions, pass them on!)

A Review of Christina Strigas’s “Love & Gaia”

A BOOK REVIEW BY CHRISSI SEPE

Christina Strigas is a Montreal poet who has published several poetry books, including Love & Vodka and Love & Metaxa.  Her words are raw and honest, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and they reveal the inner life of a woman in love, a brave mother, and a human being who seeks to see beauty in the simple, everyday things. Her newest poetry book, Love & Gaia, completes this trilogy, but rather than speaking the thoughts of a woman, this book is told through the point of view of our planet Earth.

All the poems in Love & Gaia were originally written by hand in Christina’s journal.  Perhaps this method helped her get closer to our physical world than if she had used technology? 

In Love & Gaia, our Earth has a voice.  In one poem, the tree expresses its sorrow: “My cousin’s arms connected to mine. We were together for over four hundred years. I heard some humans and their machines coming closer, but we could not run.”

In another poem, the shells collected at the beach tell their feelings: “Take me out of the plastic bag that has killed my soul. Place me in a jar. People love to stare at me. Sometimes pick me up.”

Love & Gaia reminds us of our connection to the earth and prompts us to not take it for granted.  Christina also dedicates a chapter to “Tea Leaves,” reciting how green tea is a natural elixir: “You make my mind stop tossing and turning. Somehow, I am calm when you are on my lips.”

As a special bonus, each chapter features black and white illustrations that perfectly complement the poems printed beside them. My favorite is a drawing of a tea bag personified. The tea bag’s clothes are its tag and string, and its hat is an upside down teacup. 

Christina Strigas’ unique ode to nature is creative and refreshing.  I have never read a poetry book like Love & Gaia, and I will never take nature for granted again.

(Photo of Christina Strigas)

Christina’s book can be purchased at Amazon, here, and at Barnes & Noble, here.

Chrissi Sepe’s most recent appearance at Fast Pop was here.

“Bad Coffee” by Ben Macnair

(new poetry)

It has no warning, no health and safety, no government advisory notice.
It has no instructions, no recipe, no regular appointment time.
It has no certain way of reacting, no known behaviour when in captivity,
but we know when we see it, when we smell it, when we taste it.
you see it on the television, cop shows with not enough light, and too many donuts,
or when friends meet up, and have take after take in café scenes,
just setting the scene, just chewing the fat,
but Bad Coffee, like a bad boss, a bad memory,
will always taint memories, like that.

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

Ben also has a piece of music, “FAT CHAFFINCH,” at our Open Mic blog.

An Excerpt from “New to Class” by David Stewart

Toronto was the first place I’d lived where political leaders made me feel welcome. When I was growing up in Quebec, governments closed my English school, banned English signs, and expropriated the asbestos mines where my dad worked. From there I went to Calgary, where the mayor at the time, Ralph Klein, called the many eastern Canadians moving there “bums and creeps” and told us to go back where we came from. One way that I coped with my outsider status was to hide parts of myself, such as my Englishness in Quebec, or my eastern-Canadian sympathies in Alberta. Imagine my pleasant surprise when Toronto’s civic leaders merely shrugged at newcomers like me. My days of hiding were over. 

But over time, I learned that Torontonians had their own ways of categorizing people: by where they lived and how much they earned. When Chris and I had been pals back in Calgary, I’d had an inkling that his parents were well-off, but neither of us had given money much thought. That all changed in Toronto. Pricey real estate and my dad’s post-asbestos career troubles pushed my family out to the suburbs of Scarborough, known for its endless rows of tract housing and strip malls. The downtown kids called it Scarberia. 

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!