NEW POETRY 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/ …

by Karl Wenclas DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction, although inspired by real-world events. The characters are composites and/or works of the imagination. It's also satire. PRELUDE: August 2026 Ahmed Al-Babou drove away from the victory party in his vintage blue 1970 Olds 442 automobile, in a happy mood. He never drank alcohol, but carried a peaceful buzz in his head nonetheless, caused by the knowledge he’d run a near-perfect campaign and won a narrow victory even though $70 million in corporate-and-lobby money had been spent against him.

TWO classic American stories are wry commentaries on non-fictional news events. ******* “The Girl on the Plane” by Mary Gaitskill, written in 1993, concerns a man on a plane flight who …

OUR BEST OF THE NET NOMINATIONS ARE we the best of the best? We like to think so! No one does more with less, working on the New Pop Lit project in our spare time and still having the best looking literary site(s) out there, while presenting some terrific writing. Which we're proud to spotlight with our "Best of the Net" nominations for this unsteady point in time.

A BIOGRAPHER LOOKS AT A BIOGRAPHY LIKELY no author was more interested in the idea of success and fame in America than Norman Mailer, and no personality more the focus and even victim of it than film actress Marilyn Monroe. Those two larger-than-life forces came together in 1973, eleven years after Marilyn's death, with Mailer's biography of the actress, Marilyn…

by Carl Rollyson So far as I know, I am the only biographer to recognize Norman Mailer’s signal contribution not only to an understanding of Marilyn Monroe but to the genre of biography. His book appeared in 1973, about a year after Gloria Steinem launched Ms. Neither Mailer nor his detractors advanced the idea that his biography was part of that second wave of feminism.

PROSE POETRY MY SISTER says she searched for the girl per my request the girl I liked twenty years ago. My sister says she can't tell if the source is accurate but it looks like she may be married and living in Your Town, USA. She says she doesn't recognize the husband's name and the source says he's older than us so she doesn't think he is one of our former classmates.

ON W. DAVID MARX’S BLANK SPACE WHILE WAITING at the local library the other day for my wife to select a DVD movie to rent, I scanned through a book of cultural criticism I’d heard about…

NEW POETRY (image c/o briefly) The looming curve of the water towers,all hip pose and body scold,guards the swampy no-man’s landbetween concierge and drum thump,mealie meal and silver spoon forgetfulness. Up in town, jagged bottle glassis concreted along the tops of walls.Down in the townships, doors are left opento the night breeze and come what will.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN A ONE-OFF ZINE CALLED REASONS TO VOMIT (profiles of various writers and editors) BART WELLESLEY WESTEN THOUGH Bart Wellesley Westen is from Southern California, he is adjusting to life in New York City. "Where are they? Are they after me yet?" he yells as he ducks behind a davenport in his million dollar penthouse apartment. "I'll smash your face if you come near me."

by Karl Wenclas (image c/o Shuran Huang/ WSJ) I. “Two minutes and counting,” the Advisor said with a smirk to his personal assistant as he stared at his phone. “Per usual, the directors are late.” …

A REVIEW OF SLANTED AND DISENCHANTED BY LISA CZARINA MICHAUD REVIEWED BY KARL WENCLAS We were going on tour even if we were wildly unprepared. We didn’t have a bassist to blame. We didn&#8217…

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 repea…

SHOULD art be removed from realities of this world? Or immersed in them? Today we're surrounded by narratives. Layers of them. What's real? What's fake? Who's scamming us? How do we grasp any sense of reality? Curiously enough, the task of fiction in this kind of world is to awaken us to the falseness, and ground us in some sense or memory of reality.

by Cliff Aliperti (image c/o CNN) The familiar man in his familiar costume, a military uniform with unfamiliar medals and ribbons, spoke in his language, unfamiliar to me, while a neutral voice translated through the TV in the break room. “We embrace peace with all peoples, especially your nation,” the translator said. “Opposing powers, enemies of both of our nations, are the ones who rattle sabers towards our olive branches.”

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.”

QUIZ QUESTION REVELATION The question, at our previous post, was about conspiracy movies and revelations. Specifically, two 1962 films which prophetically anticipated the JFK assassination the following year. One of the two films was easier to guess: "The Manchurian Candidate." But what's the second? What would throw people off the track is that it's a Western. One directed by John Ford yet.

TEST YOUR FILM INTELLIGENCE TWO 1962 American movies introduced conspiracy thinking into cinema, and maybe into America. Ironically, or prophetically, both films were released the year before an historic event which inspired countless such theories. NAME both movies and the event.

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.

FICTION BY KARL WENCLAS "A what?" Middleton asked. "A Destruct Button," Brady said. "Not a real button of course, inserted into his brain. Nothing like that. Though I'm sure it's possible, and soon enough we'll have them in our candidates. No, I'm talking about the equivalent to a Destruct Button that could be pushed to in-effect eliminate a candidate when he or she becomes inconvenient.

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…

NO. 1: MOMOA MAMA New Fiction: a story in 3 parts (image c/o uhdmaxdotnet) A storm was expected and the ocean was already churning. I had been walking along the shore for a while, leaving behind the blankets, frisbees, and guys hawking ice cream cones crowding the beach. All my senses were engaged by my surroundings: the sight of the sea foam bubbling on the shore, the roar of the surf, the smell and taste of the salt sea air, and the feel of scratchy hot sand underfoot.

NEW POETRY It is 12.03, early afternoon.The man in the park takes anotherswig from his can, and tells everyonein hearing distance to enjoy every second. He is having a good time of it,but everyone else looks uncomfortable,their lunch time break tainted, as they walk by.It is only luck that means we can pass,and think, there but for the grace of God, go I. Ben Macnair is an award winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter/X @benmacnair.

PART ONE: AN ANTIDOTE A FEW WEEKS ago, Compact Magazine published an interesting-but-gloomy essay by Matthew Schmitz, “Heteropessimist Horror,” on the state of relations between men and…

PART ONE: AN ANTIDOTE A FEW WEEKS ago, Compact Magazine published an interesting-but-gloomy essay by Matthew Schmitz, "Heteropessimist Horror," on the state of relations between men and women among the new generation in this country. The sexes are portrayed as moving ever farther apart. Are things truly that bad? Are there solutions? Reading the article, I thought immediately of a movie sequence I'd posted about…

SUMMER is officially here in a few days but weather-wise it's already arrived, for most of us anyway. Which means it's time for: Summer Reading! Sitting on a beach or veranda with your favorite book, or on your favorite literary site, plunging into adventure and literary experience while expanding your neuropathways hopefully by encountering talented new writers. Which we're always on lookout for like scouts, watchdogs and detectives.

by Julia Piehler My upbringing was the perfect foundation on which to build misgivings towards religion. Although my parents were not Catholic, I was sent to a Catholic school the moment I was potty trained. They acted under the misapprehension that it would be a gentler option than the preschool of the Army base where my father was serving. My parents, nonetheless, cautioned me that the goodness of the church that would be extolled to me at Sacred Heart was far outweighed by its evil acts, such as enslavement of native peoples, hoarding of wealth, and practicing corporal punishment.

NEW POETRY Leaning backwards pressed against the wallYellow roses fill my armsI rarely liked photos of myselfBut this candid Framed by Rick’s cameraReally pleased me from the first It was a wrench that the Flowers and the photos Came from Rick, my parents’ friendAnd not my parents I rode home on the back of his Honda 750…

NEW POETRY Creature from beneath the wavesMade its way through the turbulent ocean surfTo die drowning in the sharp air of our windy shore The giant Pacific octopus is five feet longIts skin is white and its huge eyes blueI feel desperate to save itBut when I circle it in my arms to carry it to the water…

MEANWHILE, we're adding yet more hype to the pop-lit world with a poem at Fast Pop Lit by Julia Piehler. We'll be featuring in a week or two a very good creative non-fiction work by Julia. One of many new literary talents lurking under literature's snoozy facade, waiting to be brought to the surface. Stay tuned!

NEW POETRY My roses waltzed in the gusting breezePartnered by their shadows createdBy the low-angled sun Unseasonably warm for MarchWhich has slighted the gardensof the rain due them Saturated colo…

A FINAL SPENDING SPREE? EVERYBODY for one day was talking about this vehicle. Most striking to me about the Ferrari Luce (named after the Time-Life founder?) is its price tag: $640,000. For a manuf…

HOW RIDICULOUS? Just how ridiculous is The Guardian’s “100 Best Novels” list? Never mind it’s called the best novels published in English. Do they mean originally in English…

MUCH discussion has taken place this week in the online literary world about distinguished(?) Granta magazine running a prize-winning short story later discovered to have been generated by AI. This raised the question of what kinds of stories literary publications, such as our own, should be running. How do we react to the ongoing AI onslaught? WE BELIEVE the key to survival of the art is to keep it grounded in reality, with emphasis on our humanity.

by Aspen Audley (image c/o brookingsdotedu) I had feared it was lost forever. I spent three days looking for it, disassembling the master closet, groping my way through the poorly lit basement, brushing off cobwebs as I probed the attic’s far corners. Finally, searching under the bed, I discovered a big, plastic box with promise. Holding my breath, I removed the lid.

NEW FICTION! It was the first day. I was new to the school, knew no one, and hoped that, with this fresh start, I could shed my usual shy personality and make real friends.  The girl on my rig…

NEW FICTION! It was the first day. I was new to the school, knew no one, and hoped that, with this fresh start, I could shed my usual shy personality and make real friends. The girl on my right had hair as short as a boy’s. She was petite in stature, small-boned, with rosy cheeks, glossy lips, and heavily-lashed, ice blue eyes.

IS IT ART? PART TWO Is kitsch as a concept over? It should be. Especially when you consider that the man who painted the above painting, "Murder in Mississippi," Norman Rockwell, was long considered a kitsch artist, and was one of the main targets, along with O. Henry(!) and rock n' roll(!!), of critic Dwight MacDonald's provocative diatribe, "Masscult and Midcult." But what do you think? Is the painting art?

A QUICK QUIZ FOR MORE than 80 years the artistic establishment (money) has pushed a concept of scorn designed to dismiss and prohibit populist art. The concept has been called: kitsch. Most often m…

A QUICK QUIZ FOR MORE than 80 years the artistic establishment (money) has pushed a concept of scorn designed to dismiss and prohibit populist art. The concept has been called: kitsch. Most often meaning, what the masses like. The concept, at least the scorn, extends to political art. "Art must never in any way be political," arts mandarins say. A mantra of theirs for decades.

WILL LITERATURE RAISE ITS VOICE? PUSHBACK against mad tech overdogs and an increasingly insane society has begun. Along the margins, so far. Among the people. At local city council meetings, citizens raising their voices against this planned technocratic atrocity or that one. From-the-ground-up happenings. The question for the populace, We the People, is how far to go. Open rebellion? Out of the question.

by Evan Brown (image c/o engineeringdotfbdotcom) Right-wing and left-wing podcasters warned the revolution would start in big cities like New York, San Francisco, or L.A. What the world learned from their daily hot takes and nightly news broadcasts was just how out of touch the opinion-makers really were. They were wrong—about where and when and who, and most importantly, why. …

WHO? (image c/o freepikdotcom) AN EASY CHOICE, really. In this time of Amazon and other tech giants pushing gigantic data centers on us nobody wants; the Bayer company promoting glyphosate; Ford Mo…

NEW FICTION It started just outside a decrepit strip mall in Jackson, Tennessee. Back in the 1970s, my dad told me it was a great place to shop and eat. I can still see him listing off all the places that disappeared, one for each gnarled arthritic finger: a Walden’s Bookstore, a K-Mart, a shoe store, and at the center, Robert Morris Cafeteria.

NEW FICTION BY KARL WENCLAS (image c/o mansionglobal) ONE MORNING financier Sir Peter Plutocrat, waking up in his 57-room mansion west of London, in the United Kingdom, decided he hadn't enjoyed the article he'd read in Britain's faux-conservative newspaper last night-- it was not conservative enough-- and decided to buy the publication. "It's those 'creative' writers," he muttered to himself as a robot maid brought him tea and biscuits on a silver tray.