Reckon Review

Author: reckonreview

  • NO TIME TO DIE | Creative Nonfiction by Brian Benson

    I was walking into the latest James Bond movie, hands and arms full of popcorn and frozen Junior Mints and foamy beer, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I shuffled my snacks to my elbow pit, pulled out the phone and found a text from my aunt, asking if I’d talked to my mom.…

  • A LITERARY JOYRIDE: EXPERIMENTAL FICTION MEETS MAGICAL REALISM | a review by Dawn Major

    Review of Bradley Sides’s Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood In Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood, a collection of seventeen magical realism stories by Bradley Sides, the author experiments with unconventional narrative structure, multiple points-of-view, and genre-fusing. Sides can break the rules because he knows the rules. The author avidly contributes author interviews and…

  • LATECOMER | Fiction by Eileen Frankel Tomarchio

    He slips in quiet as a silverfish, right after opening credits, a few seats over. No showy Whew! like the matinee is sold out, like it isn’t empty in here but for the usual few lunch-baggers and running commenters and dozing users in the balcony. The movie’s a dark one. A Place In the Sun.…

  • OPERATIC HEART | Fiction by Jen Soong

    My lover didn’t disappear all at once. On Friday, I walked home from work and she kissed me at the door, smelling like cardamom. The sky spilled lavender ink.         “Look, my pinky finger is missing,” she said, holding up her right hand. Gone. No stub or trace. Her tone was full of anticipation. Her face,…

  • THE POWER OF WHAT’S LEFT UNSAID | a review by Francois Bereaud

    A Review of Maud Lavin’s SILENCES, OHIO As a person who has lived on both coasts but never in the “fly over states” (which I imagine to be pejorative to those to who live there), I came to Maud Lavin’s chapbook, SILENCES, OHIO from Cowboy Jamboree Press, interested in learning more about a large swath…

  • PARENTAL RECKONINGS: Uncooked Writing and Parenting

    By Amy Barnes A woman in a gorgeous fall suit once handed me a package of uncooked hot dogs, in an elementary school hallway. Like we were spies exchanging slimy secrets. After hugging her kid, she ran out the side exit door, high heels clacking. There’s a parent discourse raging about room moms and parties.…

  • THE THINGS I ALWAYS DO | Fiction by Benjamin Porter

    I clean Grandpa before I clean the rooms. This makes it easier—to get it out of the way. Maybe it means I hate him, or I’m just chicken shit. Either way it has to be done quick, like setting a joint in one pull. Saw that once back in high school at a match where…

  • ADVERSITY: Art as Resistance in the Misinformation Age

    By BARLOW ADAMS “During the Vietnam War… every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”—Kurt Vonnegut It’s a…

  • THE PREACHER MAN | Fiction by Kimberli McWhirter

    It’s not much of a town. Not many would dispute my word on that. Hardly qualifies as a wide spot in the road. But it’s home. Got some good people, some bad ones, some sittin’ on the fence ones, depending on who’s watching. And it’s pretty enough, in the way things usually are, if you…

  • The Nitty Gritty Interview with Andrew K. Clark

    By Charlotte Hamrick Where Dark Things Grow by Andrew K. Clark (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2024) was a surprising and immersive read. Surprising because it was not what I thought it would be, which was a horror novel. It was much more, a step into a magical, mythical, yet gritty world set in The Great Depression…