NOMINATIONS — 2016 PUSHCART PRIZE

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We are pleased to announce our nominations for the 2016 Pushcart Prize (nominees are for stories published in the preceding year—2015, in this case):

We owe everything to all of our wonderful contributors, and it was a challenge to narrow the field, but we felt these pieces really highlighted our focus and drive here at CHEAP POP.

We wish all of our nominees good luck, and if you haven't already, now's a great time to read these stories!

THE SERIAL KILLER'S GHOST — ERICA MOSLEY

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We asked the serial killer's ghost, did he bury the bodies in the crawlspace?
             “No,” he said. “That was Gacy.”
             Would we find bits in cupboards, under bricks? Had he threaded petals of human lips onto the window blind cords?
             No. “That was that other one. I was much more creative.”
             It took a long time to get the serial killer's ghost to talk. At first he only jumped out at us from hall closets. Once, I woke up and saw him with the kitchen shears, practicing his serial killer pose in the full length mirror. We coaxed him with a trail of brandy shots down the stairs and into the kitchen. We used paper cups; our snifters weren't unpacked yet.
             The townies told us the serial killer had been suspected but never charged, had lived here all his life, had died in the attic. That's why we got the place so cheap.
             We finally got him to sit still in a kitchen chair but he balked at our curiosity.
             “You sure are some sickos,” he said. (Imagine! The nerve!)
             He disappeared for a while, but we brought him back with cigarettes. Across the table late at night we watched his lungs expand with swirls of smoke as he told us his stories.
             He told us the puppy story: once, as a child, he mowed the grass wrong, and as punishment his father made him watch while he sawed the ears off the new puppy with a bread knife. We thought we understood then why the lawn was always so nice. It was a pretty good story. But then he told us more stories, predictable stuff about bullies and dead cows and his mother's stockings. It went on and on. The serial killer's ghost followed us up the stairs when we got tired, sat on the foot of the bed, and kept talking. The serial killer's ghost didn't know he was boring. He did not know he was a disappointment.

Erica Mosley lives in the Missouri Ozarks. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Austin Review's online Spotlight, A cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. 

SUMMER OF THE MAKEOUT QUEEN — GEORGIA BELLAS

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The only trip she takes these days is back in time via the Google satellite image of her front stoop. She types in her address and zooms in with the mouse. The picture is a little grainy because it was dusk and thunderstorm-dark but there is enough light to illuminate the two bodies glued together in summer heat. You can see the back of her neck where her hair curls damply below the barrette holding up thick brown waves. If you squint you can imagine the pixels are drops of sweat.

If you look closely you can see his left hand cupping her right breast, her nipple poking between two fingers, the ruched edge of her sundress tugged down below a tan line.

If you look closely you can see her right hand digging into his left shoulder. Her fingernails are red.

If you look closely you can see the pale white of her right thigh, dress pulled up to her hips, his hand between her legs. If you look closely you can see her foot on the cement, red toes curled over the top step.

If you look closely you can see her tongue down his throat.

You can't actually see that she knows. Their faces are pressed together, indistinguishable. No space for a breath between their lips let alone a glimpse of tongues. But she can taste the salt of his lips still and it is almost the same thing.

The only thing you can't see, no matter how closely you look, is her heart.

Georgia Bellas is the Fiction Features Editor at Atticus Review. Her work appears in Split Lip Magazine, People Holding, Lockjaw Magazine, Synaesthesia, Sundog Lit, Cartridge Lit, Bird’s Thumb, WhiskeyPaper, The Collapsar, and [PANK], among other journals. She is one of the poetry winners for Sundress Publications' 2014 Best of the Net Anthology. You can follow her teddy bear, host of the award-winning Internet radio show "Mr. Bear's Violet Hour Saloon," on Twitter @MrBearStumpy.
 

WELCOME HANNAH GORDON — ASSISTANT EDITOR

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We are pleased—nay, excited!—to welcome Hannah Gordon as our new Assistant Editor!

Hannah brings a wealth of experience, both front of the house and back of the house in the publishing world, and we're so delighted she'll be joining the CHEAP POP team.

Get to know Hannah below. She rocks.

Lots more excitement to come. Stay tuned.

Hannah Gordon is the author of Almost Love Stories: A Collection, and her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Vagabonds: An Anthology of the Mad Ones, The Vignette Review, Synaesthesia Magazine, WhiskeyPaper, and more. She can be found online here and tweets here. 

MONKEY BUSINESS — GREGORY LEE SULLIVAN

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So here’s why you did it: Someone pointed out your vestigial tail.
             You shrieked when you heard it. You bit dirt or something. You rolled around the lot so much that a cloud formed.
             But all the apes on Gibraltar are missing a tail, you remembered thinking. You shrieked again and you flailed a paw at some air. And you pulled on a tuft of your brown fur. To hell with these haters, you thought, and you climbed up and perched on a rail near a winding highway, and you looked out at the sea and the Atlas Mountains. You thought about your damn childhood. Yes, you were born on this same gargantuan rock of limestone and shale. 
             But you’re still furious, so you hop through a window into a moving car zipping past. You rip into the upholstery. You stop for a second and you look at the people in the car, a man and a woman. And they begin making what might eventually be a YouTube video, if they even can escape. Now maybe you’ll maul them. Look how happy they are. Poor people. You crawl, slowly, over to the woman’s back. When you show your teeth it almost looks like a smile.

Gregory Lee Sullivan's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, New Mexico Review, Barely South Review, and elsewhere. He recently completed an MFA from Rutgers-Camden, where he founded the journal Cooper Street.

PARK BIRTHDAY PARTY — DANIELE De SERTO

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English translation by Valentina Penzo

Hi Arianna! How are you? I called you twice but your phone was on answering machine. So I’m writing. I’m sorry you couldn't make it to your brother’s birthday yesterday. It was a nice party. I met his new girlfriend, Lori, finally. She’s pretty and she is a true dog lover. I offered my help with organization, but she just wanted to do it all by herself. This could be the reason that there were almost more dogs than humans at the party.
             The food was awesome and the idea of celebrating at the park was definitely pretty good. It was a perfect day to keep in touch with nature. Even if it wasn’t always easy to relax, to be honest. Having a peaceful meal, for example, was impracticable. Every time I tried to put something in my mouth, there was a big young Rottweiler that took it personally and showed me how pissed it was for that. Also I missed the banana bread because Rosco, a black Labrador with its penis constantly on display, urinated my jeans.
             Except for me, all those invited were definitely into dogs.
             A young girl, I can’t remember her name, spoke a lot about the stressful perinatal environment experienced by her dog and its consequent lack of fulfillment in recreational activities. This was the starting point for an enthusiastic discussion about leadership between dogs, nature of canine play and most importantly, how to recognize behavioral cues that indicate that play is escalating into a dangerous fight.
             I guess they've been talking about dogs basically the whole fucking time.
             I don’t want to justify the pictures you might be seeing on Facebook today. But yes, I raised a glass, more than once, with that fox terrier. I was already drunk at that point. Probably I drank too much to fit in. And to alleviate the boredom of conversations, too. So today I can’t distinguish between what actually happened and what was just a figment of my imagination. I’m pretty sure that, when the dances began, I saw Robert tying his boyfriend Markus to a tree and joining the dance floor alone. But what about cake served into dog bowls? Did it happen or was I tripping?
              Actually It could all be a dream as I blacked out a couple of times on the grass. I remember waking up feeling the cool and refreshing relief of a cold pack gently placed on my forehead. Never knew a Labrador's ballsack could be that refrigerating.
             Reading the comments, it’s a matter of fact that when it was time to say goodbye I started to bark very loud, and aggressively. As you can see, everybody is still arguing about the reasons. I don’t want to interfere because I can’t remember anything of the barking part. Lori says that she will ask her dog trainer and post his opinion.
             Can you please ask her not to do it? 

Daniele De Serto lives in Roma (Italy). His work has appeared in journals such as Fiction Southeast, Granta Italia, Cactus Heart Press, Linus, Thickjam, Cadillac Magazine. He also worked as an author for TV shows.

THE STEPHANIE, 74 ELDERT STREET — DAVID JOEZ VILLAVERDE

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For Joseph Bashar Nakhleh

Daddy is yelling now, angrier than before, his voice snarling and snapping in bursts of staccato Spanglish as if his words were buffering, the speed of his lips not quite matching those of his thoughts, his hands overcompensating for the truncated syllables and burnt phonics, fists pummeling the card table in the kitchen with all the weight that lifetimes of frustration carry as the cutlery temporarily levitates before gravity remembers to be inviolable and fork and spoon skitter across the floor.  Mommy is hoarse from screaming, half naked, half crazy, in the living room grabbing the collectible ceramics embossed with the Virgin Mary cursing unintelligibly as she arms herself for Daddy who is on her now pointing his finger menacingly in her face as spittle flies from his mouth. Neither notice Baby poking his head out from under the century old voussoirs, crowned with the same ornate keystone that celebrates all of the masonry adorning the windows of the 4th floor. Baby is talking to Kitty who is perched on the edge of the fire escape because Kitty knows innately that loud vibrations precede viciousness and to avoid them whenever possible but Baby never learned that violence is anything but the way things are and will always be and Baby wonders why Kitty is hiding on the black trellis of ironwork outside the window and Baby calls to Kitty in the stale cold of a purple sky as his beckoning is drowned out beneath the screams of quotidian horror. Neighbors do whatever it is that neighbors do, turning up the television under the waning cycles of an indifferent moon.

That is one story from tonight. In an hour a group of boricuas will scatter as a lone dominicano opens fire and one of his angry bullets will carom off the yellow brick of The Stephanie whistling dead on the silent asphalt of Eldert Street. Tomorrow there will be a big holy roller in a crispy white suit in front of the Iglesia de la Profecia de Bushwick ranting about the evils of homosexualidad and you will remember that people hurt because they are hurt. You will remember the Puerto Rican day parade is on the 8th this year. You will remember that all hearts are by nature circumspect, that in the 105 years The Stephanie has stood on Eldert Street only 4 tenants ever died there, and only one from foul play, you will remember that nothing stays, everything goes.  Baby turns his head back from the window and picks up spoon and knows as you do, that the purpose of gravity is to pull all things into themselves. 

David Joez Villaverde is an editor for the After Happy Hour Review in Pittsburgh. His writing has been featured in the Belle Rêve Literary Journal, The Jewish Literary Journal, Restless, Runaway Hotel, Apocrypha and Abstractions, The Pittsburgh City Paper, Uppagus and the Loyalhanna Review. He has forthcoming work in the Great American Wiseass Poetry Anthology. His writing can occasionally be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com

THE LETTER UNDER THE SIERRA CLUB MAGNET — ALINA STEFANESCU

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The letter is written in red ink on heavy sketchbook paper. The letter says he misses her. The letter says she can’t doubt the existence of a house and car and children between them. She musn’t rush to judgement for he has the mortgage papers in a manila folder to prove it. Stamped by a notary public. The letter says she should take a deep breath and remember their intense desire for one another. She should trust that desire. She should consider much money they had blown to satiate that desire over the past decade. He has receipts for airline travel to prove it. Some are digital receipts. The letter says she is complicated and not an easy woman. Her parents agree— she is hard to live with— but he is not making excuses. The letter says he misses her so damn much he doesn’t know how else to put it. Or where to put the missing. Some way to fill the blanks. And who would have thought empty places get sore over how much it hurts to find nothing there. The letter says the problem with empty places is hope. No place is empty and unexpectant. No empty place accepts its hollow core. Every vase in the kitchen cabinet wants to be filled. But empty is mute— it can’t speak. The letter says the problem of missing her is that the part that needs her is a place that is absolutely empty and no sound comes out. She should trust the emptiness because it can’t speak unless you fill it a little and then it reminds you of how much more space needs to be filled. The letter says he didn’t sleep well last night. He kept thinking about love and the way love’s glass is never half full but mostly half empty. She mustn’t mistake his anger for lack of love. They shouldn’t count sheep when their thoughts are full of empty glasses.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania, raised in Alabama, and reared by the love-ghost of Tom Waits and Hannah Arendt. Her homeland is a speculative fiction. Currently, she lives in Tuscaloosa with her partner and and three small homo sapiens sapiens. Her "stuffs" is forthcoming in PoemMemoirStory, Kindred, Cruel Garters, and others. More online at www.alinastefanescu.com.