Reckon Review

Tag: Creative Nonfiction

  • The Theseus Paradox for Exhausted Parents

    Creative Nonfiction by Shannon Frost Greenstein 1. Imagine you have a steaming hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning. You drink the first sip and hail Jesus. Before you can take a second, Child #1 needs juice and Child #2 is walloping Child #1 for whining about juice. You put down the coffee,…

  • The Curse of Clumsy

    Creative Nonfiction by Brandy Renee McCann I break things. The handle off my favorite coffee mug. The zipper of my fancy purse. I have broken the hearts of people who care about me.  Just last week, while finishing a cup of sleepy tea, I knocked the teapot with my mug. Tink! I looked down and…

  • Looking Skyward

    Creative Nonfiction by Blake Johnson It was a blameless summer afternoon, and perhaps overhead faint cloud wisps intertwined like phantasmal fingers, drifted like angels at play. This was the day your mother gave you a few dollars to spend at the ice cream truck, to buy whatever you wanted. You sprint up the street as…

  • Reincarnation

    Creative Nonfiction by Rae Theodore Mom found this little mutt in the street with tan and white fur that stuck out this way and that Ziggy Stardust all lightning bolts who we called Max. Mom swore Max was her old beagle Peaches reincarnated as if god didn’t have more important things to do than take…

  • Water Viper

    Creative Nonfiction by Kaitlyn Crow Tromping around together in the creek, Granddad told me stories about cottonmouths and water moccasins. Twice a year, he drove in from Ravenswood with something new – retellings of “The Seven Wives of Blue Beard;” news clippings featuring bears eating out of suburban trashcans – but snakes came up every…

  • Coke Bottle / A Burro’s Tale / Fried

    A Small Town Triptych Creative Nonfiction by Charlotte Hamrick Coke Bottle One day Mamma walked in my room and said A body could balance a coke bottle on your butt. She didn’t say if that was good or bad and I didn’t ask. I remember this because Mamma didn’t talk to me directly too much.…

  • Imaginary Deaths

    Creative Nonfiction by Stephanie Parent Here is what I remember: The little orphan Heidi separated from her grandfather in Heidi, the Shirley Temple version. I watched the movie one morning before preschool, and then refused to go. My mother let me stay home. Littlefoot’s mother, victim of both a Tyrannosaurus rex and an earthquake in…

  • The Finch Hunter

    Creative NonFiction by Barlow Adams My sister had painted the kitchen a sickly green and her meatloaf was dry. The onions in it were too big and there were too many of them. It was mama’s old recipe. It was only old now because mama died a year ago. Before then, it was just mom’s…

  • Polish

    Creative Nonfiction by Meredith McCarroll Box turtles lived in the woods above our house. Our dog, Alphie, roamed the neighborhood and returned home covered in spurs, with muddy paws and snout, with bloated ticks standing on end. Alphie carried these turtles to the front door and dropped them gently for us to see. Mom found…

  • Sweet Fruit

    Creative Nonfiction by Karen Luke Jackson You ate that first one and its flesh was sweetLike thickened wine: summer’s blood was in itLeaving stains upon the tongue                                       Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry-Picking” The summer my mother was five, she and her older brother Buck went blackberry picking. Working along a fence row, they filled a pail and a cup…