Reckon Review

Category: Fiction

  • Star of Wonder

    Fiction by S.A. Cosby Latisha took a long drag off her Newport as Calvin came through the door of their trailer. The cold December wind tried to sneak in with him; he slammed the door shut as he shook himself, tossing light flakes of snow on the floor. Latisha thought he somewhat resembled a bear.…

  • Road Trip in A Place Where a Different You Once Lived

    Fiction by Sumitra Singam is a melanoma sun scorching your driving hand while your other sneaks pineapple lumps and chocolate fish, sips of L&P sugar-rushing you straight back to CDs and spaghetti straps and first kisses. It’s single-lane highways stretching long as a piece of string, sweet as bro, until a logging truck slows you…

  • Melanin and the Pink Tube 

    Fiction by Sudha Subramanian Janice’s cries slice through the hardwood even before I knock. It is a frosty November morning, and the ten-year-old’s screech, spattered with words, is thawing the frigid air in the foyer. I slip my hand into the bag to feel the edge of the plastic tube, and my toes trace the…

  • One Hundred Percent of the Time

    Fiction by Rob D. Smith Maria Jaworski slid the Styrofoam container containing spinach ricotta pierogies across the window counter to her last customer of the evening. He was always her last customer. “Did you hear about the fire last night at the Parelli’s?” Eugene Mitchum leaned his beefy forearms across the food truck counter. “Never…

  • Some Trouble Next Door

    Fiction by Craig Rodgers The dogs won’t stop tonight. They’re barking, they’re yipping. The sound of their bodies hitting the fence with some force comes and comes again. Andrew turns the blinds but he sees only streetlight falling onto the road. He thinks, maybe I’ll go over there. He thinks, shut those dogs up. He…

  • Abandoned

    Fiction by Zachary Kocanda I joined a lot of Facebook groups after Theresa got sick. Our daughter Katie helped me download the app on my phone. It took an hour, but I did it. First, I joined a group for spouses of cancer patients, then a group where folks chatted about growing up during the…

  • A Stranger Selling J-Cloths

    Fiction by Susan Carey I dream of it often. Haynes Farm. The pebble-dashing on the outside walls of the farmhouse was done by a cowboy builder and after a few months the white layer cracked off in big chunks revealing the house’s bare skin. I imagined the house was embarrassed, like a woman opening the…

  • Imagining the Woman Known Only as Wife On this Eroded Tombstone in the Old Butler Cemetery off Route 194

    Fiction by Janice Leadingham James E. McAnderson1887-1948Co. E. 7th Vol. Inf.Born in West Virginia and His WifeC___1900-1962 C___ spent her growing-up split between her grandmothers—Grandmama, a Baptist who lived in a white clapboard just past the General Store, and Mamaw, who told fortunes with the bones of a bad-luck-cat washed clean in a south-flowing-river to pay Popcorn…

  • If You’re Not First, You’re Last

    Fiction by Brendan Gillen Looking back, the ending was obvious. The cicadas sang, a sigh of deceit. It was summer, depression heavy in the air, heavy in our apartment, in her heavy slurps of hazelnut coffee. I hated the smell. Made my gut lurch, made my ears burn. We did not yet believe that death…

  • Last Rites

    by Kim Steutermann Rogers I wake to fog rolling up the hill like it’s late for something. A whirl of misty clouds rushes through the cracks of the old house and slips down the valley. I see shapes and figures in the mist, their hair long, their arms beckoning. Mother always said I had second…