She boxed away her Virgin Mary, the ceramic blue Virgin Mary and Child her Mémay had given her for First Communion. Her rosary beads, which she took on all her travels, are in a desk drawer, in the same tin box they came in. She was fourteen when her Mémay gave her the beads, telling the girl that her uncle had bought the beads on a busy seaside boardwalk. She knew that boardwalk, a place where the smell of fried fish and the whirligig of flapping pinball machines met the cold Atlantic Ocean.
by Andrew Roe
Another time I worked at a dentist’s office. I did the molds for people’s teeth. Me and this other guy (Dave? Don?). We got through it by getting high in the mornings. We’d sneak out to the alley. Then we’d do the molds. It was summer and 95 degrees in the room where we worked and Black Sabbath ruled.
Today’s possibility: 56.7%. Every month or so there comes a new Moses, babies left bullrushed on the river, sometimes there are notes though more often there aren’t, fourteen so far, What to do with the Moseses? the newspaper asks regularly, and for now the answer is the same as for any other question. With the …
by Gabriel Valjan
It’s the air that I remember most when I think about the story of the two cousins long ago on that balcony above Mexico City. There, high above the Federal District, I had looked down and seen the Cuauhtémoc borough, where the poor lived; there, in the visible distance, the open-air markets, or tianguis, of the failing Tepito barrio tenements is where our story happened long ago. I also remember on a very clear day, when the smog was not as intense, one could see Laredo to the northeast and, with very good eyes or binoculars, the faintest insinuation of Los Angeles was a mirage to the northwest.
by Sara Amis
Here you are, only you, the rock, and the hill. Nothing else. No light: no sun, no moon, no fire, no lamps, no stars. No darkness: no night, no shadows, no inside or underneath, no time. No death, that’s over and done. There is only gray rock, gray hill, gray distance which fades away into nothing at all.
Up on the mountain, we hang out in abandoned buildings, places where stories fill the holes in the walls. The old teepee was on the bottom of that ridge, before lightning struck. Now all that’s left is the charred platform. Harry’s cabin is up the road, but he sometimes returns, with his shotgun, his dogs, …
I can’t imagine that they let you watch the news in whatever terrible place they keep you. There were more riots today, around St Paul’s. I was on the other side of the river, and I saw the Truth Grenades going up from there; little puffs of silver smoke. Some of the protestors came across Millennium Bridge, dragging casualties. Have you ever actually seen anybody who’s been hit by a Truth Grenade? Ironically enough I suppose you’re the one person in this country who hasn’t.
Krishan Coupland was born in Southampton, England, and now studies at Staffordshire University. His work has appeared in Brittle Star, Aesthetica, and 3AM Magazine. Read more.
by Micah Dean Hicks
The villagers heard the stickman coming before they saw him: hiss on the gravel road into town, the click and clack of branch to branch. He walked up the dirt street dragging bundles of wood and brier behind him. The stickman was twice as tall as the tallest man in the village and wore a cloak of brown leather, so patched it looked made of mouse skins. He was filthy and thin, vermin walking the blades of his straw-yellow hair and beard.
She has quick hands. She hangs from the ceiling, holstered, her back supported. The razor is a hair too close, starts at the skin of the belly and shears it smooth. My feet are over my head. I am making it easy while imagining what her life must be, the only woman amongst cowboys. Do …
The coal in the fire grate pulses a scalding infernal heat that bakes our exposed faces and hands. Through our clothes our trunks and limbs are feverish. We sweat.
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