Reckon Review

Category: Nonfiction

  • THE WORDS I SAY BACK TO YOU | by Jeffrey-Michael Kane

    He pauses mid-sentence now, the way a man might stop at a door he meant to walk through and forget what waits on the other side. A small stilling of the hand. The fingers lift, hover, as if the word might be caught in the air if he gives it a second longer. Sorry, he…

  • I KNOW NOW WHY THEY CALL IT STILLBIRTH | Nonfiction by Lacey Rodriguez

    I think I know now why they call it stillbirth. I always thought it was because of the nature of a child not alive… Still. Cold. Lifeless. But now I think it is because the room goes still. Time stops. More like, you exist outside of it. The entire universe is encapsulated in that little…

  • ORANGE JUICE, 2000 | Nonfiction by Mary Thorson

    We believe in Orange Juice. We have many beliefs, and orange juice is one of them. And plane crashes. On the morning of the day that Uncle Willie died, he came back from his car to the kitchen three times. The first was to tell his wife that he loved her. The second was because…

  • SOMETIMES A BOY JUST HAS TO LIE | Nonfiction by J.R. Welch

    Hayti, Missouri — 1979 The trailer was white with faded green trim, paint peeling from the metal siding still hot from the day’s sun. I sat in the back of the cop car, vinyl sticking to my legs. In the Delta, cops had a way of making everyone sweat. That night, it wasn’t just the…

  • DUDE, WORST TITLE EVER | Nonfiction by Jim Roberts

    “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” That quote is attributed to W. Somerset Maugham, although no one seems to know for sure if he wrote it. Deciding which advice to accept and which to reject is, for me, the most difficult part of writing fiction. There’s…

  • MOTHERING, 21ST CENTURY EDITION | Creative Nonfiction by Alina Zollfrank

    Because I held them after; Because I felt them before they clawed their way into the dim of the delivery room; Because I channeled our dead when I lifted my firstborn to the heavens and said, Look, she’s here and cried tears of relief because the new life lived; Because I spilled over when baby…

  • H.O.M.E. | Creative Nonfiction by Mireya Gonzalez-Looby

    The foundation was a raised structure, typical of 1920s California bungalows, designed to float just above the earth to protect it from creeping moisture. Decades of poor drainage had defeated that intention. The soil, parched and cracked in some places, swollen and waterlogged in others, had shifted beneath the house, pushing and pulling the foundation…

  • THE FIRST TRAIN OUT | Creative Nonfiction by Cindy Sams

    A girl rides west toward a new stepfather, a yellow bedroom, and a life she hadn’t asked for. June 1972 The train pulled out of the station in New Orleans at dawn and headed west over Lake Pontchartrain on a long stretch of track that led to Benson, Arizona. Our new home. At least for…

  • I THINK I’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE | Creative Nonfiction by Katrina Ralbag

    It was 98 degrees with 90% humidity, and my thighs were sweating through a beige knee-length pencil skirt. He had to choose yesterday to kill himself, in the middle of summer, during a pandemic. It felt like a final fuck you. One last gag from a man who’d always had a dark sense of timing.…

  • UNEARTHING OUR ANCESTORS: An Interview with Jeremy B. Jones |  by Jessica Cory

    Jeremy B. Jones’ most recent work Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries will come out in September 2025 with Blair Publishers. Cipher follows Jeremy’s fourth great-grandfather’s encoded writings while simultaneously grappling with the author’s own role in his family, particularly as a parent. This book offers a raw, honest look at the role of…