new writing

“Ghosts which precede dying” by Damien Farley

NEW POETRY

Riding behind the moonbeams’ reflections
on the Palisades Parkway,
I walk with ghosts:
a younger me, my father,
an abandoned road to nowhere,
both figurative and literal,

snow, white on the ground,
untouched and me beneath it,
haunting me.

The task I always put off.
The footfalls silent but for the crunching of snow
and evergreens
seeking escape where cliffhangers were born
and die and I not far behind.
Never nearly Far enough.

Too seldom on a voyage directed by their voices,
not simply my own.
One tasks me now to leave this trail untraveled still.

Damien Farley from NJ writes only to dead friends and acquaintances, in the hours after midnight. His poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in Maudlin House, Ink in Thirds, Pink Ochre Magazine, Tap into Poetry, Discretionary Love, Dirt Freckles, Rat’s Ass Review, and Soup Can Magazine.

(portfolio image: “The Ghost” by Joseph Mandi)

9-4:30 by Ken Kakareka

NEW POETRY

(image c/o brewerdotcodotil)

i never
wanted
a 9-5
and haven’t
had one
but
the past
2 weeks
i agreed
to work
9-4:30.
i must
admit
there was
something nice
abt.
coming home
and
cracking open
an icy
red ale
on my
porch
while dusk
danced w/
dark
and the
wind
stirred my
soul.
the sky
steadied at
midnight blue
mixed w/
grey
like an
oil painting
smeared
together
on a canvas.
but
it wasn’t
enough to
commit
to this
schedule
as i’ve
already
committed to
a life
of nonconformity.
30 minutes
of glory
each day
isn’t
worth freedom.

Ken Kakareka is an American writer of works of fiction and nonfiction, such as BULLSHIT (Anxiety Press, 2024) and Summer of Irresponsibility (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His novella PARIS IN ALL ITS GLORY is on its way with Anxiety Press. Ken’s work has appeared or is on its way in numerous rags including Gargoyle Magazine, The Disappointed Housewife, and Foofaraw. He has been nominated twice for a Best of the Net. A list of selected publications can be found at kenkakareka.com.

An Excerpt from “In Translation” by Cliff Aliperti

NEW FICTION

“Look, I understand,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “You had problems over there. That’s why you’re here now. But the man said he doesn’t want any trouble.”

“No,” the IT guy repeated. He turned and looked at me, his expression pained but frozen. “I apologize if I do not express this correctly. But that is exactly not what this bastard says.”

“Look,” I said, growing annoyed. “I just heard him—”

“No, I am sorry, Alex.” Wow, IT guy knew my name. “You just heard the translator. These words the translator said, they are not what that bastard says.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Now I really don’t understand.” 

“Look, there is no reason you would know this, since you do not speak my language. If they were smart, they would mute his sound and just let the translator talk. But they do not, so I can tell you with certainty that these words the television say are not the words this bastard says.”

“What’s he saying then?”

The IT guy exhaled before dropping his head. “He said that we are a powerful nation, not one to be bullied by foreign powers, no matter how strong such foreign powers pretend to be. He says we will defend ourselves to the last drop of blood, and he says if his demands are not met, he is happy to smash first and force action.”

“Jesus,” I said. How could that be? “How could that be?” I asked.

“That could be because your people are as shitty as my people. Just as happy at fooling the sheep. This bastard, he’s a bastard, but he’s not the one lying to you.”

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Already Almost Over: Part Three” by Filiz Turhan

NEW FICTION

(image c/o forgotten ny)

I met Dizzy Gillespie once. No joke, it was really him. Who could mistake him for anyone else? The charming smile, French beret, puffy cheeks and yes…the famous trumpet. My friend Freddie and I had wandered into the Village Gate on Bleecker Street one night. I was an underaged teenager and thrilled to be in a jazz club at 1am, even if it was just around the corner from my college dorm.

 A hostess led us to a little table and asked resentfully (the place was empty and obviously she wanted out of there) what we’d have to drink. We ordered a round (a beer and a coke) and then poor Freddie nearly plotzed when he saw Dizzy standing by the piano, trumpet at the ready.   

I had always been a fan of old music and old movies, so I, too, recognized Dizzy immediately. In fact, it wasn’t my first such celebrity sighting: just a few months earlier, I had been in Los Angeles for the first time, staying at a friend’s parents’ house. One night they hosted us at Spago, a restaurant so famous that even I had heard of it. Once we were seated, I began scanning the room for famous faces. Right away, I spotted one and gleefully stage whispered to the table: “Look! There’s Louis Jourdan!” My friend’s dad was impressed. Why? because I was 18 and it was 1986 and Louis Jourdan’s last big movie, Gigi (I know, cringe), had come out in 1958. Had I seen Molly Ringwald and Judd Hirsch making out in the corner, I couldn’t have been more excited.

So there we were: a coke, a beer and… Dizzy Gillespie! 

I don’t have words to describe the music. Actually, Dizzy was wrapping up this unofficial gig in an empty club and so this magical moment was already almost over. We asked if we could speak to him, and when Freddie explained that he was a professional saxophonist, Dizzy graciously chatted about the business with him for a few minutes. He then kindly turned to me and said, “You look a little bit kind of familiar.” He asked me a couple of questions and when he heard I was Turkish, he said, “Oh, yeah that’s it. I remember…in Constantinople….” His voice trailed off and his eyes fluttered to the ceiling. 

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just followed him up to the ceiling, gazing at the something I could only guess at.

Filiz Turhan is a writer and community college English professor, living on the North Shore of Long Island. Her work has appeared in The Sonora Review, The Threepenny Review, The North American Review, Litbreak.com, and elsewhere. She likes cats.

“Already Almost Over: Part Two” by Filiz Turhan

NEW FICTION

I was attending the opera with my friends Jenn and Melissa. Before going in, we ran into an acquaintance of theirs. As they chatted, I was thinking, “Gosh, this man looks so familiar!” Later, it came to me. He resembled the actor John Lithgow. I meant to mention this to Melissa, but in the rush of people getting in to see Madama Butterfly, I forgot all about it. 

After the show, we were in the corridors under Lincoln Center on our way to the subway. We approached a doorway and they went first; as I entered behind them, a man tried to dart through from the other direction so that we were both in the doorway at the same time. I am very short and the man was very tall.

It was John Lithgow. The REAL John Lithgow. 

In that moment of proximity, he asked, “Excuse me, do you know the way to the stage door?” 

Time stopped as I was already calculating the wild improbability of this encounter. I wished I could have explained to him all about the Lithgow look-alike, how, in my opinion, real-Lithgow should have waited for me to pass through the door first, that we had a cool six-degrees of separation thing (I had briefly known his Third Rock co-star, Kristen Johnston, back in 1986 when she was the summer roommate of my best friend Meredith), that in fact, I had no damn idea where the stage door was (why should I), but alas, this was already almost over because neither of us had ever stopped moving. 

What I actually blurted out to the perplexed man was: “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you right now.”

Part 3 coming in three days.

Filiz Turhan is a writer and community college English professor, living on the North Shore of Long Island. Her work has appeared in The Sonora Review, The Threepenny Review, The North American Review, Litbreak.com, and elsewhere. She likes cats.

An Excerpt from “A Portrait of a Lady in Gold” by Elizabeth Ohga

NEW FICTION

Penny knows she should tell her husband. She wants to tell him. Maybe if she tells him, he’ll say, “That doesn’t sound terrible, and who cares? I love you and the kids love you and we know you’re a great mom and that’s all that matters.”

What he actually says is a couple minutes of nothing, which Penny feels compelled to fill in with an apology. Then he says, “Listen, Penny, I know it’s been hard for you lately. Why don’t you try to find a babysitter to help you out, maybe you can go to the spa or something and treat yourself?”

Penny loved her husband. Really, she did. You can love someone, know they are your soulmate, and still hate them every once in a while. Love was a choice, and Penny and Gabe chose to love each other every time the choice presented itself. The thing Penny was trying to figure out was at what point did the choice present itself too often? At what point did the moments of searing contempt arise with a frequency as to inform her, this is probably not the right choice. She is sick of explaining parenting to him. She is sick of explaining being poor to him. She is sick of explaining that they are pretend rich people, which is the same thing as being poor.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“The Forbidden Fruit Bites Back” by John Haymaker

A Quirky Take on Data Overload, Entropy, and AI


When a Microsoft 1990s advertising campaign asked, “Where do you want to go today?” Our minds raced. Possibilities seemed limitless. I just never thought anyone’s answer would be batshit crazy, but that seems to be our final destination. Cognitive-load research clocks the average adult processing nearly 34 GB of information daily, outpacing our neural architecture’s capacity.

From a frontier for discovery, the web transformed into a massive online data dump, burdening the human mind with too much information everywhere all at once. We got sidetracked, and Silicon Valley capitalized, turning every click, scroll, pause and search into a commodity sold to marketing firms. Humans became subordinate to profit. To maximize their bounty of data, they’ve addicted us to an Internet of Things, no household gadget too trivial to wire up and shadow. If we look away, clickbait sucks us back in.

As a result, many of us have surrendered to endless scrolling, binge-watching and algorithmic echo chambers. I worry that entropy, the curse of the universe that trends toward chaos and disorder, has tripped the circuit breaker of rational thinking. When even Elon has gone all crackbrained, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Fortunately, humanity has a fallback: artificial intelligence. All mankind’s knowledge sits in microprocessor warehouses, ready to perform in seconds calculations that would confound our feeble “lizard brains” for eons. AI might shoulder the heavy lifting for us while we Twitter, troll and follow.

Despite warnings from scholars that AI poses existential risks to humanity, tech gurus seem giddy for a post-human world, willing to risk AI wiping out humanity. Before that worst-case scenario unfolds, however, entropy may still have the final say. If Eve’s “forbidden fruit” has left us choking, the inherent volume of data stored in AI may well trip its circuit breakers exponentially faster than ours did.

Hey, ChatGPT, what is the probability for that? 

John Haymaker currently surfs the web from New Hampshire. A former educator and programmer, his essays and fiction appear in print and online in various journals, including Hawaii Pacific Review, The Bookends Review, The Hooghly Review, Quibble Lit, Cosmic Double and New Pop Lit. Find out more at https://johnhaymaker.com/. 

(main page portfolio image c/o richard rogers partnership)

“Notes From a Hotel Balcony” by Joseph Pfister

NEW FICTION

Who knows what thoughts cross the man’s mind as he gazes upon this glittering, green slice of paradise? Who can map that tangled interior, those labyrinth chambers of his mind? What memories flare like sparks, and which corners remain dark, dormant?

Does the sight of so many all-but-naked bodies stir something in him? Or does it pull him backward—to his mother, to her hand tugging him toward the car after swim, to a half-remembered sermon about shame, to the certainty that beauty and loss are always intertwined? Does the crash of breakers remind him of the relentless crush of time? Or does it remind him of the natural ebb and flow of all things? Of the sweet futility of resistance?

Perhaps his thoughts are smaller, pettier: Are the Mets losing (again)? Does the rental car really have to be returned with a full tank of gas? Does the persistent bump on his left testicle warrant a call to Dr. Benson? Or another month of avoidance? Does he turn over, again and again, the whisper-fight with his wife by the pool, the one about nothing and everything?

Does he worry about his waistline? His cholesterol—the bad one—which Dr. Benson warned him to keep an eye on? Does he worry about the hair gathering in the drain and the twinge in his left knee that feels like a harbinger, even though he’s not even fifty? Does he consider the balance on his credit card, the health of his parents in Phoenix, NATO, genocide, the day-by-day destruction of democracy and the earth itself?

Will he remember to tip the valet? The housekeeper? Does he wonder how his investments are doing and whether he should get that new iPhone and will his oldest daughter go in state or out of state, which is what the man and his wife were fighting about, anyway? Should he check his fantasy team for the thousandth time today? And beneath all this static, does he glimpse it? The truth? That everything is fleeting? That he is one of those waves, rolling endlessly toward the shore, collapsing in a rush of foam and silence? Does he recognize that he is just like those surfers standing on their boards in the setting sun, caught up in the sweep of something beyond their control?

Joseph Pfister’s fiction has appeared in Hobart, PANK, Juked, and X-R-A-Y, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College.

“The Day of Her Burial” by Peter Mladinic

NEW POETRY

(image c/o ncronline)

A man at the diner
made the server cry.
The cops weren’t called.
He wasn’t even asked
to leave. The manager
came. The man’s yelling
rattled us diners, his loud
early morning swearing
at the end of the twentieth
century—five hours later,
an ice cold day,
my mother was buried—
is what I mostly recall.
He paid his bill
but didn’t tip
or invite anyone
to see his side.
Around his greasy hair
florescent light
signaled nothing’s
going right.

Peter Mladinic’s most recent book, The Whitestone Bridge, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.