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Pond 79 - February 2024

Submissions Open
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This is SPANK the CARP's 10th year and counting. It has been and will continue to be my pride and joy. I hope in some small way I and the contributors I've had the pleasure of presenting, in some small way embiggened the world of literature, if even just a smidge.

​Enough wishy-washy. Let's dive in... 

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- Ken

"Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an' he foun' he didn' have no soul that was his'n. Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul."
​                                       - Tom Joad, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
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The 2023 Anthology is now available

S H O R T   S T O R Y
Tom Ray - Friendly Reader​

FLASH
John Brantingham - The Joy of Snakes​

P O E M
Cliff Saunders - Sounding Board

S H O R T   S T O R Y
Stan Dryer - Memories Made, Memories Lost 

FROM THE EDITOR - non-p O e M
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Pigasus and Carpicus

P O E M
Mary Paulson - Employment Opportunities​

FLASH
Steven French - Blue Moons

FLASH
Ryan James - Sunrise on the Moon

P O E M
Annie Przypyszny - Writing A Fable With Birds

Support the Carp...
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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
For something entirely different check out
​ Carpal Tuna.
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Mind of a Poet
Cliff Saunders​​
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Author Profile
Michelle Meyer​​
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Fish read...

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
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Authors' Row

Click on any image to order.
Cheryl J. Fish
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With age 40 looming, Nate, Nora, and Lulu find their lives unraveling, their aspirations dashed. Nate, dead broke, in his eighth year of graduate school delves into yoga. Nate's ex-girlfriend Nora finagles a position in Finland where she tries on men like miniskirts and embraces sisu, the Finnish concept of perseverance, in pursuit of motherhood. And yogi Lulu, Nate’s talented teacher, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse. OFF THE YOGA MAT takes the reader on three risky coming-of-middle age journeys through sensuality, emotional evolution, and breathing deep.
Terry Tierney
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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.
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“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
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​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
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Kim Malinowski's verse novel plays The Phantom of the Opera the novel by reflecting the original characters' roles onto modern day characters. Who wears the true mask--The Phantom or the protagonist protecting her agency?
Richard Sipe
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In his new book of poetry Richard Craig Sipe explores what happens in the aftermath of a life, a town, or a love. These are the LOVELY DREGS: what is left over, what remains, what is never the same, except that, somehow, oddly, it is.
 
LOVELY DREGS is available from Atmosphere Press
Patrick T. Reardon
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Prompted by the suicide of his brother David, Patrick T. Reardon undertook a deep exploration into their shared childhood as the two oldest siblings in a family that grew to 14 children and into his own painful babyhood. Puddin’ is told from the perspective and in the voice of a baby. Each of this small book’s 101 single-page chapters is imagined.  Yet, each is rooted in reality, in facts and feelings.  In an Afterword, Reardon, a journalist for half a century, explains in detail how created a special language for Puddin’ as the baby sought to understand his life.

John Michael Flynn
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Dreaming Rodin is Flynn's second story collection, available from Publerati. All proceeds of the book's sale go to funding literacy programs worldwide. John can be reached at Delays Flights. 
Terence Gallagher
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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.

William Quincy Belle
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​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.
Patrick T. Reardon
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This exceptional book enables us to see, as if for the first time, something that is right under our noses. It is almost impossible to imagine downtown Chicago and the Loop ‘L’ without each other, and Patrick T. Reardon explains just why that is so in a lively narrative full of information and insights.”
​—Carl Smith, author of Chicago's Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City
Peter Dabbene
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​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
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​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.
​Fred McGavran
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"McGavran’s are stories of obsession and experience. They are the stories of characters who are nearing death and who are thinking about what they will leave behind. They are deeply human, and entirely serious, with a touch of humor and a little bit of magic to light the way."         - Anna Kasik, Englewood Review of Books

Hear Roberta Schultz's review on WVXU
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