new writing

“Would You Rather” by Anne Marie DiStefano

NEW FICTION

(c/o hiltondotcom)

My career as a Seattle restaurateur has really taken off. A food magazine recently referred to me as “the grande dame of the Northwest dining scene.”

On a dark gray day, in the pouring rain, you pull up outside my flagship restaurant in a brand-new black Corvette. When you roll down the window, my employees recognize your distinguished profile and say, “It’s him! He’s back!” 

I take off my apron and hand it to my manager. I get in on the passenger side. You tell the car’s voice-activated navigation system to find the freeway on ramp, and we speed south down I-5.

We spend the first night at the Benson Hotel in Portland. The pillars in the lobby are made of Circassian oak, and the floors are marble. We reserve one of the suites, and have dinner in the steakhouse. People turn their heads when they see us together, because they know who we are.

The next morning, we find that the car has turned into a Mercedes. It’s still raining, but the sky is brighter, colors are more vivid, and everything seems less blurry. We spend the second night at the historic Ashland Springs Hotel. We taste the lithia water and eat dinner in a restaurant with a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme.

By the time we leave the Travelodge in San Francisco, our car has become a Honda hatchback, and we listen to classic rock on the radio. On the steep rise of the Grapevine, the car gradually loses speed, and it shivers every time we’re passed by the hulking, honking semi trucks. We have a friend who’s going to UCLA and she lets us crash on her dorm room floor for the night.

We cross the border into Mexico in our VW Bug. We have to stop to top off the oil, but the engine doesn’t overheat. After asking for directions several times, we finally find our way to a place at the end of a dirt road where they rent hammocks and you can sleep on the beach. That night, we hear whales breathing in the warm shallow water of the Sea of Cortez. In the morning our car is gone. We have no way to get back. We’re two sunburned kids sitting on the hot sand, playing “would you rather” and trying to figure out how we are going to pay for breakfast.

(photo c/o daltonjohnsondotcom)

Anne Marie DiStefano was, until recently, the owner of the Lucky Horseshoe Lounge in Portland, Oregon. She has owned a historic movie theater and worked as a freelance journalist and as a columnist for The Portland Tribune. She studied English literature at Reed College and Oxford University.

New Pop Lit’s Editor Appears in Frighty #3!

BIG LITERARY NEWS

IN THE BIG PUSH back to humanity and reality, Wred Fright‘s new zine Frighty is at the forefront.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Halloween season, with smashed pumpkins and out-of-control squirrels everyplace, it’s appropriate that another issue of Frighty— #3-– appears on the scene.

Does the pumpkin on the cover foretell the fate of the established literary realm?

One thing for certain is the zine is filled with terrific writing nowhere else to be seen: new work from Markell R. West, Pat King, The Midnight Rider; articles about Morrissey and ducks in jeeps, and other cool stuff.

HERE’S Wred’s own write-up of the issue’s debut, which explains how it can be easily obtained, for free!

(In the 19th century, what were in effect zines of the day were “Beneath the American Renaissance,” in David S. Reynold’s famous phrase. Today, are they beneath American decline? Or an escape– or rescue– from it? Is another renaissance coming?)

“The Day Trump Died”

A SHORT STORY

(image c/o skycasketsdotcom)

We heard the news and rushed outside. The sun was shining. Birds singing. Everyone happy.

We scribbled out a song in celebration, came up with a quick melody, then went down the basement to our little home studio and recorded it. Fun singing. Total throaty energy. She strummed a guitar. I clapped out a beat. No AI.

We posted the song online and announced it on social media. We didn’t think of charging anything. No paywall. Total goodwill.

Within an hour thirty million people had streamed it. Neighbors who’d heard about the song collected outside our house and began singing it. We joined them. People were dancing. More people. Soon: beer and pizza. Wild rejoicing.

A major record label contacted us and offered a contract. “Yes!” we said. Prepare the papers.

More news appeared online and on TV, with more details. Someone reported the president’s last words: “Melissa Maloney.”

Melissa Maloney? His first girlfriend, apparently. He’d met her after prep school, the summer before he went to college. The only woman he’d ever really loved, before he became a ruthless, narcissistic sociopath.

Reporters tracked her down to a retirement home in North Carolina. An elderly woman sitting next to a window. “Who?” she asked.

New President Vance meanwhile revealed plans to remodel the White House yet again, with plusher sofas.

Then: more news. “President Trump is not dead,” a serious-voiced network commentator intoned on television screens, with more frowns on his dramatic face than normal. Dark clouds appeared outside, threatening rain.

Our recording contract with the major label was cancelled. We hurriedly reversed quitting our shitty jobs, telling our bosses we’d been joking.

No parties this weekend.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “On the Dance Floor” by Leah Browning

NEW FICTION

That night in bed, when she placed one leg over his and began sliding her palm over his chest, he put his hand over hers and rose a little, giving her a decisive peck on the cheek before turning over with his back to her and making a big show of arranging his pillows just so. 

He heard her sigh and turn over. Good. The next day, he would start looking at rentals. He couldn’t face another six months of couch-surfing, as he’d done after the breakup with his previous girlfriend. He’d worn out his welcome with various friends and their girlfriends, not to mention that they’d worn out their welcome with him. They were all so deferential, with their bran flakes for breakfast and their “Emily wouldn’t like that”-type comments. What were they doing with their lives? It was sickening, if you asked him.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Tupac Shares Nachos, Tells a Fable in Denver Terminal TGI Friday’s” by Sarp Sozdinler

NEW FICTION!

(photo by Perry C. Riddle/LAT)

The terminal was too bright for that hour of the morning, fluorescent lights pulsing in sync with the hum of a thousand tired travelers who hadn’t learned how to sleep upright. Tupac, sitting at the counter of TGI Friday’s like he owned the joint, looked out of place in the best way. A neon green cap on his head, a hoodie that said The Future is Ours in cracked white print, and a plate of nachos that seemed too perfect, too symmetrical for such a place.

I was just getting off a plane that was delayed for two hours, staring at my phone like it would tell me some kind of truth. I could hear Tupac’s voice, low, as if he was talking to himself. I didn’t know if he was even supposed to be there, but there he was. He was eating the nachos, passing them around to the three strangers sitting next to him, and then he was telling a story. Something about wolves.

I looked around to figure out if I was the only person seeing this. No one was laughing.

“You see,” Tupac said, handing the last tortilla chip to a guy in a business suit, “a wolf doesn’t fear the night. It understands that the darkness isn’t an enemy, it’s the space where life belongs.”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about his life or life in general or just trying to make sense of something else. Maybe he was just sharing, like he always did, even when he wasn’t singing. The people around him were laughing now, like they finally got it. Or at least that they wanted to. A woman in a red scarf nodded, her fingers tracing the rim of her coffee cup, like maybe she was going to say something too. But she didn’t.

Tupac took a breath, almost like he was deciding whether to keep going. “See, what I’m trying to say is, you don’t run from things just because they’re scary. You run toward them, Martha. Even when you’re hungry. Even when they’ve already eaten you.”

I didn’t get the analogy. But maybe I wasn’t supposed to. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten nachos at 4 a.m. in an airport, or why it felt like I had. Or why Tupac was here, talking about wolves and nachos, as if it all made sense. But it did, somehow. That was the thing. It made more sense than anything else. At 4 a.m. Inside the Concourse B of the Denver International Airport.

The waitress came by, filling my coffee cup without asking, and Tupac, now sitting back, eyes closed like he was just waiting for the next flight to land, smiled. 

“You lost?” he asked, stealing a nacho from the hand of a man in three-piece suit.

I didn’t know what to say. I watched the steam curl from my coffee like it might spell something out on my behalf.

“Yeah, no,” I finally muttered, then gave a half-shrug. “I’m just going home.”

Tupac nodded, as if he had heard enough. “That’s what all we do, man. We all have places to be.”

And then the terminal felt quieter. Like the night had finally caught up with the lights.

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Vestal Review, Fractured Lit, HAD, Hobart, JMWW, Trampset, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected or nominated for such anthologies as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He is currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.

“Wild” by Hal Wright

NEW POETRY

(painting by Frederic Remington)

We came to this place,
crowded with stingers and rattles and fangs,
because we too had chaos in us
That miffed chainsaw buzz
booming in our brains

Let me tell you what it was like:
the discontented, the outcast, the felon, the dreamer
discordant with society
living by our own hands, and just barely.

A fist in the jaw hello,
A tenth whisky goodnight.
Gunshots pop down Main like little shouts of joy
Hell, why didn’t everybody go West?

The Tetons stand on the cloud’s shoulders
If you chew a scoop of earth, you’ll chip a tooth on gold.
If this wasn’t Shangri-La,
Surely it was the next hamlet over.

But who needs Big Rock Candy
When we got this sunset?
And when the horizon gulps the glow—
Jesus! Ain’t we got stars!

***

Hal Wright (he/him) is a queer writer whose work has been published in Ninth Letter, The Hunger, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere.

An Excerpt from “Crypto” by Jonathan Stone

UPCOMING FICTION

This was a brain on fire. He’s seen plenty of brains on fire before. His own brain has always been a little on fire, too, and that’s how he’s sitting in this family office with fifteen employees overlooking the Pacific now. Okay, kid’s clearly brilliant. The question is always, which brains on fire do you go with, and which ones do you get as far from the flame as possible? After an hour, Mark couldn’t take it anymore. Got up, shook the kid’s hand, wished him luck, and dialed late into the board meeting of a steel mill in Louisiana they own a thirty percent stake of. 

That night, though, he thought about Ahmet’s pitch again. It’s not that he recognized some of his own original ambition and eagerness and raw smarts in the kid – in fact he didn’t recognize much of anything about the kid – but the markets were at a carnival stage right then, crazy winds blowing through the circus tent, canvas flapping wildly, and he’d hate to miss the carnival entirely. So Mark called him – you can call anyone anytime, if you’re giving them seed money. Okay, what the hell, Ahmet. A lot of what you said makes sense. Some of it doesn’t, but maybe that doesn’t even matter right now. I’m good for three mil, and I’ll set you up with a couple associates of mine, we’ll help you get the fund to fifty to get us out of the gate. 

Whereupon, Ahmet bought a ton of stuff that tanked instantly. Told you so, Mark was thinking. But Ahmet used a big portion to buy cryptocurrencies, which was outside the fund charter, drawing the instant ire of Mark’s fellow investors, who all simmered down as the crypto investment climbed, then soared.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

An Excerpt from “The Museum of Jeremy’s Summer” by Andrea Donderi

NEW FICTION

Christabel is fairly sure she’s the wrong person for this particular job. They’ve hired her too early in the game to put her expertise to best use, and she’s a beginner at the kind of trustee-wrangling and civic politics that are currently underway. But thanks to common sense, an unusual accent, some acting experience, and decent clothes, she’s getting by. The trustees have abandoned the hare-brained idea of locating the museum up here at the house; they’re working out a deal with the people restoring a big old brick building in the middle of the city. People appear to be taking her seriously.

“You’ll be fine,” her mentor Peg in San Francisco had told her. “Mostly they need an authority to quote, so they can feel okay about their decisions. And face it, you need the dough, and you could use a summer away.”

All true enough. Adrian had just abandoned a book of his own, was going through what he gruffly called a “rough patch,” and had lately been leaking equanimity-threatening volumes of vitriol. A stretch apart might give them both a chance to catch their breath.

(Troubling that Peg had noticed, though. Had it been so obvious? Christabel hadn’t said a word.)

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“The Little Mermaid Turned Forty” by Alice Kinerk

NEW FICTION

(c/o Disney)

And decided she’d been wrong to give up life underwater for some rando prince and a pair of legs. However she no longer cared about having no voice, because nowadays people just text. 

Well she divorced the dude, and moved out the next day. She packed her bags, rented a U-Haul, and paid first, last and a damage deposit on a one-bedroom oceanside condo about forty minutes outside the city. 

All of which, up to this point, sounds great. Very radical, very female empowerment or whatever. Except that part of the reason she hated her legs is because they’d developed cellulite. And her feet were now crisscrossed with blue veins. And her toenails, underneath the polish, were thick and yellowed.

Also, no one ever said being a middle-aged divorced former mermaid is easy. Like so many of us, she’s struggling. We’re talking about a woman who holed up in the palace playing sexdoll to the prince for decades. She has no GED, no work history, and very few marketable skills. Personal references are out of date and extremely difficult for potential employers to contact. Not to mention, despite the prevalence of texting, sometimes humans really do need old school verbal communication skills.  

And it’s not like the palace pays alimony. Ha ha. Yeah right. As if.

So, with federal minimum wage a miserly seven point two five bucks per hour, with the price of oceanfront condos upward of three grand a month, with grocery store sticker shock… You get it.  

These days, ironically, she plays a mermaid downtown, in the central tank at the aquarium, which helps. Government assistance covers the rest. But she’s struggling.

The truth is, I need to stop clicking on little human interest stories such as this. Because when I find a story I loved so much as a kid turned out not so happily-ever-after in the long run, I start dwelling on it. Then I get sad.

Alice Kinerk spends her free time attempting to make complicated desserts, most of which are tasty failures, such as the time she tried to make a croquembouche.  She’s published dozens of stories. Read more at alicekinerk.com.

An Excerpt from “Fame and Fortune” by Alan Swyer

NEW FICTION

Despite the lingering sense that he’d been conned, duped, or sold a bill of goods – the exact term depended on his feelings at a given moment – Jeff found himself not merely adjusting to Southern California life, but actually enjoying it. Having lucked into an apartment a block and-a-half from the beach in a still somewhat funky part of Venice, he loved the climate, which allowed him to run or bike at dawn on Ocean Front walk without encountering sleet, hail, or  horrendous humidity. He got a kick out of being in a place that had more yoga teachers than Mumbai, as well as ubiquitous Pilates studios, gyms big and small, and even a place called  Stretchlab. And he marveled at the restaurants catering to diets unheard of on his home turf. Though he had encountered vegetarian before, he hadn’t been aware of Ethiopian vegetarian, or  multiple examples of paleo, keto, gluten-free, Atkins, plus something called Zone. 

As for the infamous LA traffic, it only became a bother when, in a used Camry that made his cousin cringe, he had to make an emergency run to Children’s Hospital on the eastern edge  of Hollywood. 

In the low-rise Santa Monica office he shared with his cousin, the division of labor was clear. Steve treated the offspring of the “high-ranking industry folk,” while Jeff tended to the sons and daughters of what were termed “the civilians.” 

That, Jeff quickly came to realize, meant that he was spared the fawning, pandering, and  indulging that Steve felt provided the pathway to the success. 

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!