Cartridge Lit
Cartridge Lit is an online publisher of the finest poetry and prose inspired by video games. We believe video games are important and vital to [pop] culture.
Cartridge Lit is an online literature mag dedicated to showcasing the best lit – fiction, nonfiction, poetry – inspired by video games. Why shouldn’t there be a lit mag dedicated to showcasing Lit + Games? We don’t know why not, either, so, here we are. Uncharted prose poems. Final Fantasy III flash fiction. Segmented essay on transformation and mutation in games. ChronoTrigger. Donkey Kong. Minec
29/05/2024
Concluding our celebration of 10 years of Cartridge Lit, please enjoy new poems 8 thru 10 of the month: three prose poems by Matthew Schultz inspired by Breath of the Wild's dragons and Jose Hernandez Diaz’s “The Jaguar and the Mango.”
Three Prose Poems | Cartridge Lit A man hiked through the Faron region to the ridge where he sat upon a rocky beach near the Riola Spring watching a water snake whorl in the cool-clear basin, slip-smiling between refracted sunbeams that pierced the invisible surface.
23/05/2024
4 new poems today! Check out Angela Acosta's "The Ghost Racer," "Walkthrough (Age 8)," "Resemblance," and "When I Found Out the Rockets Never Left." We'll be back next week with 3 more to round out May's 10 poems to celebrate 10 years of Cartridge Lit!
Four Poems | Cartridge Lit You are optimized integrals and algorithms without a bedtime, without friends or YouTube videos to watch, while I exist in this body with organs, yours without, the rhizomatic tendrils of an imagined player, a threat, a test to improve my own play style.
15/05/2024
NEW POETRY on Cartridge Lit today: check out Jeremy Rock's "Fabrication," a pantoum inspired by Runescape. This is the third of ten new poems we're publishing throughout May, in celebration of our tenth anniversary!
Fabrication | Cartridge Lit I hope you’re still watching these numbers grow because the sun refuses to set and I cannot extract the sound of axe on trunk, of the split body from my bones. I keep growing sharper because the sun refuses to set and I cannot separate the chaff of all this cold experience
08/05/2024
A new poem on Cartridge Lit today: check out "The Computer Imagines Me a Boy" by Haley Bossé, inspired by Stardew Valley. More to come this month as Cartridge Lit turns 10!
The Computer Imagines Me a Boy | Cartridge Lit Broad-chested, flat And just out of reach Perched as he is A clenching boy On his digital horse Crooked incisors flashing
01/05/2024
This month marks Cartridge Lit's 10th anniversary! To celebrate, we're publishing ten new poems throughout May, starting with "Cruis’n Is Made for Love" by Russell Nichols, inspired by Cruis'n World.
Cruis'n Is Made for Love | Cartridge Lit and every second with you counts more than any stunt this is us against the world against an ever-emerging backdrop of paper mache mountains penetrated by snake skin tunnels, of pyramids and other representative landscapes
07/02/2024
NEW POETRY on Cartridge Lit today! Check out "Country Trash Proud," a suite of five poems by Mae Baltazar inspired by Night In The Woods.
Country Trash Proud | Cartridge Lit But there’s only so much sky and only so much river to drink the oceans, to make the fish cry. So much constellation for being a great thief, a failure in all things. Instead, we have full-time jobs, new again next year. Home is not gonna call itself.
30/10/2023
NEW on Cartridge Lit today: James Davis finishes his run of "High Scores," his column on videogame music, with "Forest Interlude" from Donkey Kong Country 2 and a reflection on what's important about sharing a love for such songs.
High Scores: Forest Interlude | Cartridge Lit An “interlude” is a short piece between acts in a play. More broadly, it’s any piece in the middle, without a real connection to the main events of the narrative. This is the last entry in this column, but it’s not the last I’ll write on video games and the music that makes them magical.
31/08/2023
NEW High Scores! In this latest installment of his bimonthly column on videogame music, James Davis writes about the beloved "Moon Theme" from DuckTales.
High Scores: The Moon Theme | Cartridge Lit By imitating the Atari sound in its first two bars, then layering on bass harmony and finally adding percussion once its loop begins in earnest, “The Moon” captures in microcosm the Cambrian explosion in expressive potential between the second and third console generations.
17/08/2023
NEW POETRY on Cartridge Lit today! Check out Angel Rosen's "A Portrait of Living," inspired by The Sims.
A Portrait of Living | Cartridge Lit A burglar steals your couch and your telephone but it still rings. There is always a mysterious phone call, “They are coming,” it warns. No one ever comes! House party!
03/08/2023
NEW POETRY on Cartridge Lit today! Check out three poems by Emma Thomas Jones inspired by indie game Kentucky Route Zero: "Third Floor (Bears)," "[Home]," and "Church."
Three Poems | Cartridge Lit the Elkhorn mine collapsed after a crew drilled too deep into the earth—discovering water. The mine filled fast after, carrying off its workers.