“Odin’s spear struck Valhalla’s golden floor with a mighty thud, silvered veins of sorcerous power erupting from the point of contact, energy flying electric and jagged to the four corners of his vast throne room. This was One-Eye’s signal for quiet, and I went along. We all went along….” —Kurt Baumeister, “Tragicomedy for the Fallen: …
Continue reading ““Tragicomedy for the Fallen: Part I” by Kurt Baumeister”
“Why don’t you bring Ashok over for lunch?” Nadine was an anthropologist and had to get to the bottom of things. All these days and months she’d gotten a second hand account and now she wanted to see the mystery man in person. I somehow knew she’d be disappointed, but I also knew in a …
Eckleburg is a literary and arts journal publishing original works from both emerging and awarded writers, poets, artists and musicians including Roxane Gay, Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond…
“On the second Tuesday of January the survivors gather for the annual survivor dance. They gather in the ballroom of the historic synagogue on Ocean Avenue. Like many things, the place is a shadow of its former self. Spanning half a city block, it now sits cavernous and crumbling, like a mausoleum at Greenwood. Like …
Continue reading ““The Last Survivor Dance” by Sara Lippmann”
“They were as light and fluffy as the small white clouds that floated across an otherwise spotless blue sky, of which Raffie and Kip had an unobstructed view from the balcony where they feasted on the fried scallops, clams, shrimp, calamari, and other seafood on the frittura platter. Raffie’s father and his new wife were treating them to the first-class Pensione del mare’s lunch while the parents went out on a tour of the islands. Raffie and Kip, who were living cheaply in a house without window glass in Positano, relaxed and enjoyed the hotel’s luxury. Earlier, they’d spent some time on the parents’ bed, having fabulous sex, as always. That was what kept them together, in Raffie’s view, although Kip had asked her to marry him and was still waiting for an answer. He thought he’d heard “Yes!” but that was at the acme of Raffie’s orgasm so she didn’t count it. He did, however. He was one to hold her to promises of any kind. He also held grudges, small and large, but was himself free of guilt….”
Why does his family piss him off so badly? No clue. All he knows is that he wants to scream. He nestles each fly into his tackle box. In the kitchen, his wife makes tuna-and-tomato sandwiches, their fish smell pervading the living room. She fills Ziploc bags with carrot sticks, washes a matched pair of apples. Once, he would’ve helped her. Once upon a time in their youth. Now, Caro is eight months pregnant, and José, if he’s being perfectly honest, can’t spend a single hour alone with her. He finds it unbearable. Not that he can tell her that. Lately, he has so much he can’t tell her, he feels the words clogging his throat….
Eckleburg No. 21 curates a beautiful selection of traditional and genre-bending fiction by Gertrude Stein Award winner, Faerl Marie Torres, Agnes Scott Poetry Award winner, Jessica Melilli-Hand, eleventh century Sanskrit translation by Brishti Guha, artwork by Sandra Shugart and more.
You cannot go back.
Leah had sketched the words on every scrap of paper, every grocery list, even the coupons she handed over at the store, the newspapers she bound with string and set out for recycling. They, too, bore her new mantra beneath the bylines—four words from a soft-tipped pencil she rarely sharpened….
- You’ll stumble over the pronunciation of her name. When you ask your friend Aida, who is Puerto Rican, how to say it, she’ll tell you that she doesn’t know and that all Dominicans….
Kate Scarpetta grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and spent her youth playing sports and climbing trees. She attended Princeton University where she studied under Joyce Carol Oates and Edmund White. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Review, SpltiLip, Word Riot, BULL and 14 Hills amongst others. @kate_scarpetta, katescarpetta.com
Here was the game plan: we were going to sneak into Mom’s house, stuff her cats into sacks, and drown them in the lake. A backyard bonfire for everything else—the towers of mildewed newspapers reaching almost to her living room ceiling; the army of painted figurines standing at attention all over the floor; the endless calendars dating back to the years before Dad died. But Wendell thought the main thing to get rid of was the cats. He said that above all else they were weighing Mom down, making her a harried wreck. I didn’t agree. I thought everything should go except the cats. That the cats are the one item you take away and are then looking at some serious psychological fallout. But then again Wendell and I have never agreed on anything….
Jonathan Sala lives in Connecticut. This is his first publication.
Eckleburg Workshops in Fiction
Short Story Workshop
Short Short Story Workshop
Novel: From Start to Finish Workshop
Magic Realism Workshop
Writing Sex in Literary Fiction: Are Your Sex Scenes Essential or Gratuitous?
About Eckleburg Fiction
Eckleburg runs online, daily content of original fiction and hybrid including work from Richard Peabody, Cris Mazza, Eurydice, Rick Moody, Steve Almond and more…. Read hard. Write hard. “Being a good lit citizen means supporting lit pubs. Donate. Buy. I’m going to show some #AWP17 mags that you need to support…”
FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise. We are always looking for tightly woven short works under 2,000 words and short-shorts around 500 words. No multiple submissions but simultaneous is fine as long as you withdraw the submission asap through the submissions system. During the summer and winter months, we run our Writers Are Readers, Too, fundraiser when submissions are open only to subscribers. During the fall and spring, we open submissions for regular unsolicited submissions.
Note: We consider fiction, poetry and essays that have appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as already being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. We ask that work published at Eckleburg not appear elsewhere online, and if republished in print, original publication credit is given to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. One rare exception is our annual Gertrude Stein Award, which allows for submissions of previously published work, both online and print.
ANNUAL GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION
1st Prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry.
ANNUAL FRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM
1st prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and magic realism no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff and interns are not eligible for entry. Submissions for the Franz Kafka Award are currently closed.
NOVEL AND STORY COLLECTION MANUSCRIPTS
We publish short works at Eckleburg. At this time, we do not publish novel, long memoir, essay collections, story collections or poetry collections. We do offer manuscript workshops at The Eckleburg Workshops. If you are looking to place a manuscript, we can suggest several excellent small and large presses whose excellent books are promoted through our Eckleburg Book Club — i.e., Random House, Graywolf Press, Coffeehouse, Tinhouse, St. Martins Press and more.
Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts