Pond 94 - August 2026I’m excited to announce a new feature on SPANK the CARP -
Vintage Postcard Poetry I recently began collecting vintage post cards, and as you can see in the new gallery, they are beautiful and their poetic sayings, sometimes full-on poetry, are wonderful. Take a look and if you too enjoy vintage postcards that feature poetry or poetic sayings send them my way. See details in the gallery. And as always, enjoy the wonderful lilies afloat in this pond! - Ken |
Need a Creativity Boost?
The 2025 Anthology is now available.
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SHORT STORY
Anna O'Brien
So Your Cat Went Through a Wormhole POEM
Jeff Bagato
Above the Dome SHORT STORY
Terry Sanville
Billy Joe’s Nightmare SHORT STORY
Paul Stansbury
Screatures FROM THE EDITOR
Poem
Nixon Resigns |
POEM
Anne Rankin
Sanctuary POEM
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Inanimate Objects POEM
Judy Harding
Mr. Coffee POEM
David Ram
The Anglers 
This indicates the author has enabled feedback from readers. |
Feed the Carp...
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 
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Mind of a Poet
David Ram 
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Author Profile
Jolayne C. Baldwin 
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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. |
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Authors' Row
Click on any image to order
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Jeff Bagato
In the Engine Room with Bettie & Andrea Reading Pornography collects 71 poems featuring pataphorical diversions of pop culture, advertising, the theatre of revolution, magic realism, and the emptiness of the workday grind spiral into strange vignettes, mirroring today's mediasphere in a free flowing rush of powerful images, telling stories and introducing characters and scenarios straight out of dreams. Sometimes funny, sometimes bitter, sometimes absurd, these poems develop a new language of hyperbole, sprinkled with onomatopoeia and neologisms, as the lines reimagine form, moving on the page according to specific rules. These poems have previously appeared in online literary journals.
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Lily Finch
Creatures from the Unknown asks a chilling question: what if monsters are real? After a violent hailstorm, Bobby discovers strange hair growing inside the cornhusks in newly grown cornfields near his small town. His friends vanish during a lakeside fire, and he joins forces with three teenagers to uncover what lurks beyond the edges of Thompsonville. Their search leads them to terrifying creatures—hair-covered, web-limbed beings that may not belong to this world. As the group ventures farther west, they must uncover the truth before the creatures spread. A gripping blend of mystery, science fiction, and suspense.
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Michael Keshigian
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.
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Leslie Hodge
“Leslie Hodge threads her poems with the surreal and humor and truth. I feel something new with every poem.” TR Poulson
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Stan Dryer
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….
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Terry Tierney
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. |
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Vali Hawkins-Mitchell
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.
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Kim Malinowski
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.
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William Quincy Belle
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
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.
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Peter Dabbene
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.
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Ken Poyner
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. |