SPANK the CARP
  • Home
  • Carpwork
  • Past Ponds
  • Submissions
  • Feed The Carp
  • About

​Pond 91 - February 2026

Submissions Open
I’m pleased to announce the 2025 Anthology.

​Just click on the cover image to the right and check it out. 

And enjoy this great issue to start the new year.

​​
- Ken
Picture
Picture
Picture
The 2025 Anthology is now available.

SHORT  STORY
Aspen Audley
​The Golden Thread

FLASH
Patricia Pease
Death Goes Shopping

POEM
Dan Fitzgerald
​Blue Light Special

FLASH
James C. Clar
Peace Train

FROM THE EDITOR
Lessons in Music History - ​Franz Liszt

POEM
Craig Sipe
Smoke Detector

SHORT  STORY
Chels Meyer
Everyone Knows About the Wild Dogs

POEM
Marc Watson
Dishwasher

POEM
Michael Keshigian
​Space Chatter

Picture
This indicates the author has enabled feedback from readers.

Feed the Carp...
Picture
Picture
Friends of the Carp
American Life in Poetry
The Art of Elizabeth Darrow

Barking Moose Press 
Six Questions For...
Pearl S. Buck International​
The Hemingway Society
Picture
Picture

Mind of a Poet
Michael Keshigian​​​​
Picture
Author Profile
Linda Jo Reinhard​​
Picture
Picture
Picture
Gasp!...
ARTISTS and SHUTTERBUGS
I’m looking for original artwork and enhanced photos featuring Carp (including Koi) for the Carpwork Gallery. See the Submissions page for details.
Listed at Duotrope
Picture
Picture
Picture

Authors' Row
Click on any image to order

Michael Keshigian
Picture
What To Do With Intangibles is the title of a poetry collection by Michael Keshigian, published by Cyberwit.net which features his style of exploring feelings, memories, and fleeting moments, often inspired by jazz and classical music, creating verses about life’s experiences, love, loss and reflections on time. He draws heavily on music, its moods and rhythms as inspiration to describe the ordinary as extraordinary.
Leslie Hodge
Picture
“Leslie Hodge threads her poems with the surreal and humor and truth. I feel something new with every poem.” TR Poulson​
Stan Dryer
Picture
The Americanization of Lo Pac is a quick fun read, the perfect flight candy for your next trip. Nobody gets murdered but there are plenty of secrets along the way, plus much love both requited and unrequited. The plot? Young Lo Pac, a resident of Langoria, learns English so he can work in a proposed Langoria resort. In English class he falls in love with lovely Ting Ho, but fate soon separates them. Lo Pac then goes to America to learn cooking skills.  Still pining for his lost love, he finds success in the most unusual way. And then….
Terry Tierney
Picture
Set in the Vietnam War era, Lucky Ride tells the story of a recent veteran, an unraveling marriage, and a hitchhiking trip steeped in hippie optimism, post-war skepticism, and drug-induced fantasy.
​
 
“A bang-zoom road trip novel with the queasy high-flying pace of Easy Rider and the breakneck prose of On the Road” --Douglas Cole, author of The White Field.
Vali Hawkins-Mitchell
Picture
​Now more than ever we are all well served by truly deeply listening; to the voices that come from within and from the voices of others.  Reading some of these voices may help you find your own.
Kim Malinowski
Picture
Reverberations is a verse novel that explores World War II using family history and researched composite characters that demonstrate how bonds were made and broken between families, lovers, and the government. The generational trauma from the Holocaust reverberates in the present and ripples with the fear that even the death camps could happen again. The cycle of death and trauma in unresolved and the answer to the narrator’s cry can only be answered by the reader.
William Quincy Belle
Picture
​A post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi thriller.
Antigravity: floating cites. Pandemic: 80% dead. Flesh-eating disease: artificial body parts. Insects as food. And murder in dystopia.
Terence Gallagher
Picture
Conrad is an office techie long past obsolescence, who spends his days at work waiting for the axe to fall. His refuge at night is his cool, dusty house teeming with memories, and his dreams–dreams of another world, an empire peopled by robber knights, kidnapped ladies, and a sinister warrior brotherhood.  It's no wonder Conrad gets a little addled, and no surprise that the dream empire and the waking world begin to run together.
Peter Dabbene
Picture
​Complex Simplicity reprints the first 101 entries from Peter Dabbene's monthly column in the Hamilton Post newspaper, plus assorted essays focusing on comic books, movies, social media, politics, mixed martial arts, astronomy, and more. With humor and style, these pages probe the important and not-so-important issues of everyday life in New Jersey, and America at large.
Ken Poyner
Picture
​A collection of fantastical mini-fictions. A man who encounters mammoth rustlers. Houses that begin to move on their own, forcing the inhabitants to finally introduce themselves to their neighbors. Giant chickens that are hunted for processing in the chicken sandwich industry. And much more.

​Humor, irony, mythical realism, surrealism, soft science fiction.
© Copyright 2014 - 2026 United Carp Media. All Rights Reserved.