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Join Us for AWP 2017 Eckleburg Contributor Signings at Booth #389

2/9/17 9:00:00 AM Jacob Appel
2/9/17 10:00:00 AM Bradley Babendir
2/9/17 10:00:00 AM David Atkinson
2/9/17 11:00:00 AM Laurie Foos
2/9/17 11:00:00 AM Philip Dean Walker
2/9/17 1:00:00 PM Sandi Sonnenfeld
2/9/17 2:00:00 PM Sheila McMullin
2/9/17 3:00:00 PM Melissa Grunow
2/9/17 3:00:00 PM Shanee Stepakoff
2/9/17 4:00:00 PM Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
2/10/17 10:00:00 AM Meg Eden
2/10/17 10:00:00 AM Michal Lemberger
2/10/17 11:00:00 AM Ben Tanzer
2/10/17 12:00:00 PM Laura Ellen Scott
2/10/17 12:00:00 PM Townsend Walker
2/10/17 1:00:00 PM Donald Berger
2/10/17 1:00:00 PM Gary Dop
2/10/17 2:00:00 PM Charlotte Covey
2/10/17 2:00:00 PM Meg Eden
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Jen Fitzgerald
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Kelly Fordon
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Leah Umansky
2/10/17 4:00:00 PM Susan Lewis
2/11/17 10:00:00 AM Nat Schmookler
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Cheyenne Autry
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Christine Stoddard
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Sinta Jimenez
2/11/17 12:00:00 PM Katie Cortese
2/11/17 12:00:00 PM Lale Davidson
2/11/17 1:00:00 PM Cynthia Atkins
2/11/17 1:00:00 PM Michael Coene
2/11/17 2:00:00 PM Vimi Bajaj
2/11/17 4:00:00 PM Lauren Hilger
What others are saying about Eckleburg…
 
The most exciting and adventurous and gutsiest new magazine I’ve seen in years.” Stephen Dixon
 
Refreshing… edgy… classic… compelling.” Flavorwire
“Progressive….” NewPages
 
Eye-grabbing… fun… bold… inviting… exemplary.” Sabotage
 
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
 
 

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

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The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review was founded in 2010 as 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 Eckleburg 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.

We have collaborated with a number of talented and high profile literary, art and intermedia organizations in DC, Baltimore and New York including The Poetry Society of New York, KGB Bar, Brazenhead Books, New World Writing (formerly Mississippi Review Online), The Hopkins Review, Boulevard, Gargoyle Magazine, Entasis Press, Barrelhouse, Hobart, 826DC, DC Lit and Iowa’s Mission Creek Festival at AWP 2013, Boston, for a night of raw comedic lit and music. We like to promote smaller indie presses, galleries, musicians and filmmakers alongside globally recognized organizations, as well as, our local, national and international contributors.

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.

Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away. – The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Sinta Jimenez Explains “Afternoon Chieftain”

darkness

Upon publication of her poem “Afternoon Chieftain” earlier this week, we asked for Sinta Jimenez to talk a little bit about this outstanding poem and her process of writing it.

Sinta Jimenez says:

Perverse attachments between mothers and sons have always had dire consequences, from Oedipus to Norman Bates. “Afternoon Chieftain” is an exploration into the genesis of one man’s emotional and mental disorders as a result of child abuse at the hands of his mother. It discusses the emotional incest that occurs when a deeply disturbed mother places the exploitative burden of her emotional distress and neediness onto her young son, making him fill the role her absentee/unavailable husband failed to do. Instead of encouraging her son’s growth and supporting his spirit, she debilitates him by violating his boundaries, repeatedly engaging in self-harm, effectively shaping her son into a cowering, insecure, angry man that trusts no one and believes in nothing.  Her son’s life will ultimately be marked with personal ruin, criminality, financial loss, lack of achievement and most of all, loneliness, having never developed empathy or maturing emotionally from the incestual abuse.

This piece was drawn from encountering such a nihilistic individual and though fleeting, as he was wholly repellant, deeply disturbed me. As a mother I am keenly aware and in awe of a child’s empathy, the wonder of a force of nature growing into its humanity. Though I believe for some the damage is done, there is for me a remaining mourning for all of the children who do experience the ability to live in love, to seek joy and meaning in life, but then are eroded by abuse. In Buddhist theories of reincarnation it is believed each soul has the whole world of women, millions of potential mothers to choose from, but we choose to be born into the woman for whom we will fulfill our karmic destiny. For those abused by their mothers what is that horrific karma that must be burned?

I admire writers who are able to bring humor and levity into their work but my writing comes from darker, hidden places. It is a means by which I work out experiences and encounters, sourced in pain, made into art in its exposure. Each line is of great importance to me as I consider both its aesthetics and its logistical efficacy in moving forward the narrative or emotional plot.

 

Sinta Jimenez is a writer, journalist, and editor. She has been published in literary magazines such as the Sheepshead Review, Otis Nebula, and Underground Voices. She is currently the Managing Fashion Editor at Meets Obsession magazine. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design.

 

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Afternoon Chieftain

Sinta Jimenez

afternoon chieftain
you rocked your horse
in boots and blue gingham
red feather in your hair
tomahawk at your waist
grazing against the downy
“little slaves, i am king!”
of all the toys
of all the boys
afternoon chieftain
king of small things
fine until you fell
red tongue
you cried
your lip split
it is always her scent first
then her body
it shivers against you
in silken robes
shattering through
to your elementary bones
she kneels
back from treetop and cradle
upper boughs you once travelled
from astral realms
first an idea
then a soul
then flesh
and holds her mouth over yours
red tongued
took the blood she gave you
took the taste that is almost like him
a slow suck devoured the pain
and replaced it
with another
“there, there my perfect little love”
she says before going back
to the bed they conceived you
where she stays for days sometimes
uterine
contracting
choleric
a shadow against the window
entombing the light
you don’t trust to exist
 
when he’s gone
you are her sole witness
a smothered gravity
a moon in crippled orbit
 
the bluebirds, their broken beaks and wings
the tv turned to static
her head in the oven
stroking her legs against your hands
disgusted at their fitlh
that you dared step outside
to see blue sky and air
without her
to bury a pinecone in the garden
 
there, there
our failure is indexed there
the betrayal for whores
the devalued worship
are in the remains of syllables
in the echo of those afternoons
i am
an anomaly on the radar
sole visitor to your self-exile
dark as the soil
that you buried the pinecones
a seduction of earth
 
at our marriage i cut your arm
red tongued
lip split
took the blood she gave you
never noticing how you rubbed your fingers
to remember the silk
 

Sinta JimenezSinta Jimenez is a writer, journalist, and editor. She is known for her short fiction, poetry, and fashion journalism. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design.