
Look Backwards
Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, twice a finalist for the Iowa Fiction Award and a six-time nominee for the ... Read More

“Tragicomedy for the Fallen: Part I” by Kurt Baumeister
"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 ... Read More

The Last Survivor Dance
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 ... Read More

“Frittura” by Judith Goode: Gertrude Stein Award Winner
"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 ... Read More

Announcing the Winners of The Gertrude Stein Award
Eckleburg is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction winners and finalists. Thank you to all who submitted. It is always a difficult task choosing among such talented voices and storytelling. Gertrude Stein Award: First Place "Frittura" by Judith Goode Second Place "Little Sister" by Jarrett Kaufman Third ... Read More

Developmentally Editing Characters in Eight Steps
Eight steps for developmentally editing characters. 1. Make a character list... 2. Identify frequency... 3. Code characters... 4. Amalgamate main characters... 5. Amalgamate secondary characters... 6. Give divine introductions... 7. Create character timelines... 8. Repeat ... Read More

New Mother
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 ... Read More
Pobrecita: A Blanquita’s Guide to Love
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 ... Read More
Writing Stream of Consciousness
The total range of awareness and emotive-mental response of an individual, from the lowest pre speech level to the highest fully articulated level of rational thought ... Read More
Second Attempt
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 ... Read More
Blue Dolphins
Back when Anna Gil could still walk, she avoided it. "God gives nuts to the toothless,” she said to the people who visited her, and there were still a few. The others reduced their visits until they slid over and out of the frame of her life . In the ... Read More

I Am Not Damian Lewis
Stealing the piece of Evander Holyfield’s dismembered ear that was bitten off by Mike Tyson from a rich man’s safe was my best friend Aaron’s idea. He wanted Real Deal’s ear back. He’d lost it in a poker game.... Michael Nye is the author of the story collection Strategies Against Extinction (Queen’s ... Read More

The Mother and the Rock Star
Jesse shuts his eyes to the hotel room’s stark white décor. Imagines he is in a French bordello. Thick velvet drapes framing the window. A soft canopy above the bed. Brass table lamps with beaded shades. He leans back on his elbows, kicks off his sneakers. He likes a good ... Read More

The Lost Boy
The red velvet curtain rises. Music plays, a piece heavy with woodwinds, flittering flutes set off by the depth of oboes and clarinets. The lights above the aquarium shoot rays of violet and neon pink through the water. The smell of chlorine is strong, but it doesn’t bother the boy; ... Read More

The Dolphin
When the dolphin appears in Ava Long's swimming pool, she thinks at first it is a shadow, the gray outline of a zeppelin circling above her house. Then, the gray sliver flicks its tail and dives to the bottom of the amoeba-shaped pool, and Ava thinks the neighborhood kids are ... Read More

Kickback
The kickback at the Carmichaels' was not Riley's idea. It was Liz's, of course, part of her obsession with losing her virginity to Frank Marshall. A little over a year ago, Frank had been a skinny drama nerd in ill-fitting polo shirts with an unrequited crush on Liz. AIDS, Liz ... Read More

Hollywood Story
She could be sitting up in bed, studying her lines; she might, at any moment, fling off the covers and pass by the window in stunning silhouette. She doesn't. But thirty minutes later I'm still watching when the light goes out. I am close enough to see all of the ... Read More

On Her Skin
Goose bumps are taboo; her skin must be smooth and even. Last summer, he cracked open the windows for a breeze and let two fans chase away the heat.... Claire Polders is a Dutch author of four novels with a debut in English on the way. Her short prose appeared ... Read More

Stepping on a Corn Flake
Marty realized that he had never once purchased a box of Corn Flakes, not ever in his life. The thought was very frightening. He wondered how he could've stepped on a Corn Flake in his own apartment without ever having purchased a box of Corn Flakes before.... Michael J. Coene's ... Read More

Women in the Wild
They wear devilish waders and fly-fish in the creek at its most dangerous flow. They mainline Art, sip rattlesnake venom in the nude. They balance tea cups on their bosom and dare you to notice. They borrow your boombox and never give it back. Father says I can track them, ... Read More

Sleeping Beauty in Five Parts
When she last slept, she dreamt of a great lizard taking shape from the side of a building, a dinosaur that started out as a mural but which roared to life from the brick facade. Or did dinosaurs hiss? The poor monster couldn’t sleep either, she supposed.... Cezarija Abartis' Nice Girls ... Read More

The Fedora
The following day, he hung himself in the guest bathroom of the Deardorf’s two-story, five-bedroom house. Because he was so tall, it was perplexing to the police how he managed to accomplish this in such a small space. The conclusion was that he must’ve bent his legs or touched his chest with his ... Read More

The New Playboy Club
Pretend you’re on a dating show not because you want to be (unless you’ll get a book deal, that happens sometimes) but for ulterior motives, say as a government spy or as a budding sociologist with a thesis deadline. Argue with your not-too-gruff-to-cry spy boss or with your stern-but-hip professor ... Read More

The Debate
He prepared well for the debate: waxed the skin of his face, his mustache and the bald spot on the top of his head, trimmed his beard, and rubbed frankincense essential oil on the bottom of his feet and on his neck to help alleviate nervous energy and for the pleasant smell ... Read More

Dream Work
Weird dreams are Angie’s favorites. Dreams about eggs jumping off frying pans and skating around kitchens. Dreams of waltzing with long-dead aunts on bright cruise ship decks. Randomness was easy. It can mean anything.... Nathan Tavares writes fiction, sometimes about benevolent frauds, young immortals, and the terrible and/or wonderful things ... Read More

The Drunken Witch of Birch Street
Granny Clery blamed my lack of the family eyes on my Italian father and Hazel's on her wicked spirit. But neither of us, not a one, ever fit in since..... Kristie Smeltzer's writing has appeared in So to Speak, The Florida Review, Eclectica Magazine, and The Apeiron Review. Her story, "Bridges," was a ... Read More

river thistles, celestial sage, rosy opuntia pears
These women were accomplished musicians, cooks, athletes, painters and scholars. But none before Margaret was particularly known for her physical attractiveness. Rie Hyosaka had been bullied as a young girl as the result of bulging eyes and broad-rimmed glasses. Nobuko Funatsu’s face was pulled wide and taut as by invisible ... Read More

Canary Pink
...If my Dad knew that I was crossing the picket lines – and for Pittston, those bastards, he would lose his mind, he would. Lose it. He would be screaming about Buffalo Creek in ‘72 from back when I was just a kid and how he’d survived that only to ... Read More

The Tale I’ll Tell you
Happiness is a simple thing, you said. Happiness is a cool shadow and you looking at me. But we don’t have cool shadows in Trun. In summer there is no grass like the grass you see in your picture books. The dust is knee-deep and it is so hot your ... Read More

My Only Brother
I see it playing out in front of me all the time. Kinda like a movie. I was real young when it happened. A good several years younger than you boys are now, and a little small for my age, too. My parents were fine with me being out, though, ... Read More