Prompt: Using the above image, write a microfiction (500 words or less — yes, 501 is more than 500). In your piece, respond to the image in the above photograph. Your piece may take any form you like as long as it includes less than 500 words and relates, in some way, to the image. Have fun with it. (Artwork by Ogun Afariogun.)
Laura Ellen Scott’s collection of 21 creepy stories is called Curio and is available free online and as an ebook from Uncanny Valley Press. Her novel, Death Wishing, a comic fantasy set in New Orleans, will be released in October 2011 by Ig Publishing.
“Eclectic selection of work from both emerging and established writers….” The Washington Post
“Literary Burroughs D.C…. the journal cleverly takes its name from the The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald….” Ploughshares
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How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. —William S. Burroughs
The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review is an online and print literary and arts journal. We take our title from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and include the full archives of our predecessor Moon Milk Review. Our aesthetic is eclectic, literary mainstream to experimental. We appreciate fusion forms including magical realist, surrealist, meta- realist and realist works with an offbeat spin. We value character-focused storytelling and language and welcome both edge and mainstream with punch aesthetics. We like humor that explores the gritty realities of world and human experiences. Our issues include original content from both emerging and established writers, poets, artists and comedians such as authors, Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond, Stephen Dixon, poets, Moira Egan and David Wagoner and actor/comedian, Zach Galifianakis.
Currently, Eckleburg runs online, daily content of original fiction, poetry, nonfiction, translations, and more with featured artwork–visual and intermedia–from our Gallery. We run annual print issues, the Rue de Fleurus Salon & Reading Series (DC, Baltimore and New York), as well as, the annual Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction, first prize $1000 and print publication, guest-judged by award-winning authors such as Rick Moody and Cris Mazza.
Rarely will readers/viewers find a themed issue at Eckleburg, but rather a mix of eclectic works. It is Eckleburg’s intention to represent writers, artists, musicians, and comedians as a contemporary and noninvasive collective, each work evidence of its own artistry, not as a reflection of an editor’s vision of what an issue “should” be. Outside of kismet and special issues, Eckleburg will read and accept unsolicited submissions based upon individual merit, not theme cohesiveness. It is our intention to create an experience in which readers and viewers can think artistically, intellectually, socially, and independently. We welcome brave, honest voices. To submit, please read our guidelines.
Its window looked out over the stone chapel of the Order of the Holy Child, and inside completely bare, only a tangle of electrical cords, not even an outlet. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the snake appears to Eve walking erect, before God curses him, but these weren’t snakes. They were nerves.
Eventually, the rest would come — the desk, chair, computer, bookshelves, corkboards, telephone, file cabinet, outlets, Ethernet. Those first few days, I sat cross-legged as if at a fire, spent the morning and into afternoon with the chapel’s stained glass nuns, an evergreen branch between me and them. I envied their stillness, their fixed eyes. My eyes often closed. None of my limbs yet trembled. There were no chest pains, shortness of breath, the closing of the throat, my lying on the floor in case I were to pass out. The Sisters of the Order on the windows, who once gave comfort, would then give none, just cold looks that confirmed my weakness.
I tied the cords around my legs, or maybe they wrapped themselves around me on their own accord. Either way, it didn’t work; the whole desk and chair shook. I wasn’t made for this world, the phone buzzing, two-hundred emails a day, piles of forms, proposals, grants, applications, and the wall clock that didn’t exist when the room had been empty of the world and for the tiniest of instances, one of the windows seemed to glow, as if there were more to life than this.
Randall Brown is the author of Mad to Live (Flume Press 2008). He directs and teaches at Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing program and holds an MFA from Vermont College. Short fiction pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in journals, including Harpur Palate, Redivider, Mississippi Review, Cream City Review, Hunger Mountain and The Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart, O. Henry, Million Writers, and Best of Web Prizes.
Guest Editor for SPRING 2011 ISSUE | LAURA ELLEN SCOTT
