Eckleburg No. 19

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, Stephen Dixon, Moira Egan and David Wagoner. Eckleburg No. 19 includes work by Rick Moody, Annie Terrazzo, Olivia Ciacci, Ross McMeekin, Eurydice, Andrew McLinden, Don Hucks and more.

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ECKLEBURG NO. 19 CONTRIBUTORS

COVER

Moustache | ANNIE TERRAZZO 

FICTION
Just About | OLIVIA CIACCI 
Small Fiery Bloom | ROSS MCMEEKIN 
I Am Not Who I Am | EURYDICE 

GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION 
1ST PLACE | A Song Died, ANDREW MCLINDEN 
2ND PLACE | Insecticide, RACHEL HERMANS GOLDMAN 
3RD PLACE | Song of the Amputee’s Mother | SHANEE STEPAKOFF 

REGENDERED
A Diverse Flora of Native and Introduced Species, Beautifully Adapted to Their Microenvironment | DON HUCKS 
Bomb Squad | JASON OLSEN 
Her Husband Leaves Her | STEPHEN DIXON 
Korean Bathhouse | JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH 
The Nonsense Singers of the Red Forest | RICK MOODY 
from Something Wrong with Him: A Hybrid Memoir | CRIS MAZZA 
The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) | CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN 

POETRY
Eating Children on a Fall Day | AMYE ARCHER
Earthboy | NOAH BURTON
Alligator Ecology | AARON APPS
The God of Knickknacks | ROCHELLE SHAPIRO
His Flaming Sister | LINDSAY VAUGHAN
Scene Likely Needed (Frankenstein Machine) | MATTHEW HARRISON
Undertow | MEG TUITE

FIN DE SIÈCLE
The Talking Cure | VIPRA GHIMIRE
On Alois Riegl and Miley Cyrus’s Intervention: A Prospective, Postmodern Critique | RANDY LEONARD
Ernst Gombrich: Art Historican in Debate and Dialogue with Scientists | RICHARD PERKINS
Oskar Kokoschka and the Search for the True Self(ie) | DANIELLE DAY
Sixty Thousand Truths | J. R. WILLIAMS
The Password to Postmodernism Is Denmark | PETER J. GOODMAN
To Arthur Schnitzler | EMILY TURNER
What Photography Did | BARRY PALMER

NONFICTION
A Supposedly Relaxing Thing That Gives Me a Really Serious Case of the Heebie-Jeebies | BRETT SLEZAK
Along the Path to Citizenship | MAYA KANWAL
Angel | WILLIAM HILLYARD
Average Ordinary Trainwreck | RUTH BERGER
For the Greater Good | VIPRA GHIMIRE
Fractals | RICHARD O’CONNELL
I Live in a Town | CHELSEY CLAMMER
Blue | HANNAH HEIMBACH
Marginalia | ANNA MARIE JOHNSON
Famous Writers Groups | JACQUELINE DOYLE
Virginia Woolf, Illinois | TATIANA RYCKMAN
We Are Woman | AMELIA NEIRENBERG
An Open Letter to a Suicidal Friend, a Bulimic Friend, A Long Lost Aunt and Stephanie, My New LinkedIn Connection | RAE BRYANT

GALLERY
Annie Terrazzo
Kim Buck
Zina Nedelcheva
Rania Moudaress

This Round’s on Me

Prose in Pubs

Prose in PubsLiterature. Literati. Libation.

In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jack’s Draft House serves its patrons a bi-monthly reading series called Prose in Pubs. The recipe for this stellar event is quite simple: “No microphones. No stage. No fancy cheese.” The organizers declare this on their Facebook page. “Just prose…oh, and beer.” I’m heartbreakingly in.

Unlike those ‘normal’ readings you have attended at bookstores or some dive-y coffee shop, this literary troupe congregates at a pub, because, as Amye Archer, the founder of this assembly says, “[I wanted to] host a reading series that felt like a few friends just hanging out in a pub… I didn’t want people to feel that they had to dress up or be self-conscious in any way.”  Prose in Pubs, then, is a success. The laid-back and welcoming qualities of the bar creates an encouraging atmosphere in which we artistically minded folk can feel comfortable and un-judged—a place where we can both work on and celebrate the writing that we do, with an elixir by our fingertips.

“I started Prose in Pubs simply because I found a great venue, and I felt the atmosphere lent itself nicely to an artistic crowd,” Archer explains “The audience and the readers get to share a drink, share stories, and just share space.” Maybe Bukowski had it right all along: bars and booze can be the writer’s muse.

In April, our very own Rae Bryant, author of The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, read at Prose in Pubs. But you don’t have to be a published author to attend. Any writer or admirer of the pen can take part in Prose in Pubs. And, many do. Especially when the readers offer a writing workshop for only $20. Add to that the “seriously casual” tone of the workshop—as Archer puts it—and you have a well-attended event in which “a dozen or so writers” gather to ponder “what moves us forward as writers.”

Archer elaborates that “the tone of the workshop is usually set by the invited reader; so, it can go anywhere the writer wants to take it. Sometimes we write and write and write; other times, we talk about process, which can be inspiring in its own right. The workshops usually run for about an hour and a half, but we’ve gone over that length often.” Archer’s literary crowd can listen to and learn from writers of plays, poems, fiction, and nonfiction.

Hopefully, Archer and her colleagues can sustain this gathering that is longingly evocative of the beatnik era, because gone seem to be the days when literature graced more than just coffee shops. It’s fitting, then, that Jack’s also offers music, such as jazz. Ah, bebop. Let the impassioned, howling, and beer guzzling-spurred creativity begin!

Prose in Pubs meets every other month. In June, the reading will have an open-mic session. “The readings are supposed to run for two hours, but everyone usually stays and mingles well into the night,” says Archer. Damn. How cool is that?

So, why not be a Beat and hop a train or catch a ride, and caravan it over to Jack’s Draft House to revel in those enlivening words? As Bryant said, “the group who does this, several talented writers and poets, are a lot of fun to just hang out with, read with, talk craft with.” I’ll see you there. The first round’s on me. 

 


Vipra Ghimire is a student at the Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing Program. She has an MPH, and her interests in writing and health care range from felines to tuberculosis. Originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, she’s lived in the US since 1980. Her passion is literature, feminism, animal rights, politics, music, and art. The vast world sometimes frightens her. However, she laughs easily and has been known to say and do many nonsensical things. 


 

 

Eating Children on a Fall Day

Amye Archer

by Amye Archer

 

I see the toddlers again this morning

and I can barely control my urge to eat them,

I imagine the flavors of them: the brunettes tasting like fall

nutmeg, pumpkin spice, the end of something important.

the blondes sweet

like icing smuggled straight out of a can….

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Amye Archer writes at thefatgirlblog.com. She’s been published in PANK, H_ngm_n, Boston Literary, Word Riot, and more. She does not eat children.