Reckon Review

Tag: Creative Nonfiction

  • Mother/Mutt

    Creative Nonfiction by Annie Marhefka Our mother rescued a mutt after we all grew up and left her. She had been abandoned, she said. The mutt had, too. I had escaped to college; my brothers found jobs that afforded their exit, and poof, like ants scattering, my mother joked with a tender smile. I guess…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: Good Grief

    By Michaella Thornton Lately, it’s been harder to gather my resolve and joy to bake or write much. I won’t lie; I’ve been struggling through a slow-moving season of pain and endurance, and that’s okay, too. My focus lately has been on: Of trying so hard to remember good enough is great, Rome wasn’t built…

  • Outsider Perspectives, Insider Narratives: In Defense of Omissions

    By Mandira Pattnaik In the Summer of 2020, peak-pandemic times, I received my first writing solicitation. The topic was to write a micro-memoir. I had never written such a thing before, and like the way I am, the challenge itself made me accept the offer. In near impossible times, we had become more nostalgic. With…

  • Buried Nitrogen: A Metanarrative About Peonies (And Chatbots)

    By Sandra K. Barnidge The week of Christmas, the temperature dropped to a low I’d never felt before in central Alabama. It hit near single digits with a clear sky, the kind of cold I grew up with in Wisconsin and thought I’d left behind when I moved south. There’s a name for what happened…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Running from Zombies, My Apple Watch Overlord, & My Health

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I run. Not fast, not far. I can run 5 to 10 kilometers without dying. If I told my teenage self that I would run by choice in my 40s, she would be laughing her ass off. In 2018, after my yearly health exam in which I got Cs and Ds…

  • Soundscapes: Abiding with Birds

    By Erin Calabria It is a clear, mild day in October, my first time home in nearly three years. All the leaves are glowing, suspended in translucent tiers of colored light, just on the brink of letting go. My brother turns off the road, parks, then leads the way into the woods. Almost as soon…

  • we drink hot chocolate when the world ends

    Creative Nonfiction by Jim Almo My phone rang on December 20, 2012. My mother was calling to say goodbye. My aunt had messaged earlier: “Your mother’s batshit crazy. She called in tears to say she’s sorry I won’t be with her in heaven. Her church thinks the ancient Mayan calendar is predicting the end of…

  • Finding the Line

    Creative Nonfiction by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle There is a point when you have to let off the brakes for your own safety. Every action you must take is contrary to everything you’ve ever known about self-preservation. Careful can get you killed. Speed up when a branch blocks the path in order to hit it head-on.…

  • Blood Loss

    Creative Nonfiction by Will McMillan Under the crackling strobe of grocery store fluorescents, I watched the blood as it slicked, as it gathered. Gruesome ribbons, like teardrops of scarlet, pooling into a flat, ivory platter of cracked Styrofoam. “REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE!” screamed the bright yellow sticker slapped across a fragment of damp cellophane, cocooning…

  • Betwixt and Between

    By Karen Salyer McElmurray In my twenties and thirties, I traveled highways east and west. My 1967 Dodge Dart, its engine block cracked, took me from Kentucky to Arizona and back again. I road up the east coast to Maine, then far south to Key West. I kept a road atlas on the seat beside…