Name Calling is a new online literary magazine featuring creative non-fiction works. The site will launch in early ’09.

PROMPT:
Write a story about your name. (And by story, we mean story. Please don’t submit a ‘baby names’ definition or a genealogy unless it adds to your story.)
Submissions can be essays, poetry, or short stories but must be no more than 500 words.

HOW TO SUBMIT:
Email work to: namecallingmag@gmail.com

Include your name, email, website, phone number, city and state.

The email and website address listed should be the ones you would like to appear linked to your story should we choose to publish your submission. If you do not want your email or web address linked to your story, please tell us so.

Submissions may be subject to edits.

DEADLINE:
To be considered for the launching of the site (Winter/Spring ‘09), please submit by January 15, 2009. Submissions received after the 15th will be read for subsequent issues/posts.

PAYMENT:
No monetary compensation but if this ever takes print form, selected authors will be the first to know and to receive “something”. Seriously, it could happen. Even with the economy falling apart.

RESPONSE TIME:
We read every submission and will do our best to respond to you within two weeks of receipt.

This blog has been  stopped due to the fact that literary journals will not accept submissions that have been previously published, including online publication-including blogs. There are many stories/poems in the archives, please explore.

If you would like to submit a 32-word story or poem to be published on this blog, please contact me at http://www.corisamoreno.com/contact.html.

Thanks!

Looking up at a snow-covered fig, he knows his secret is stained. He knows how to open a book but doesn’t say a word. There is ice coming down from the sky.

I hear her, still. “Have you bent the second hand?” She wore an apron around her neck like a scarf. “Have you suddenly begun to began?” The strings became a bow undone.

Such is the field of my vision. A white sea shell. A box of lopes. A cat dressed like a frog. A hole in the ceiling. A window at my back. This.

You were holding my breath. Yes, that might make sense. The last I heard he turned to her. She said you preferred the salt-colored one. No risk. You let go. No change.

If you stay this way, you could continue forever. Your name could be, Said So. You could carve into the cycles. You could let me be cold dust, too heavy to move.

“Why are you eating cereal in bed in the middle of the night?”

“I can’t help myself.”

“There’s crumbs everywhere.”

“It’s like sleepwalking.

“You are so weird. Now wash the sheets again.”

-Liz B. Jones

Want is coarse like fine sandpaper smoothing the rough spots. Acquisition, a belly-flop into the pool of your childhood. Gleefully bouncing, flying through air and the determination to make the biggest splash.

I wrote a word yesterday. Two syllables and eight letters. I’m going to try another today and maybe again tomorrow. I’m working up to a language we’ll both understand, meaning the same.