Dirt Road Driving. Jelly Jar Sipping. Dollar General Shopping. Journal of Prose.
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Warren and Leigh waited for their father beneath coronas of streetlights, giant snowflakes flurrying like locusts swarming the neighborhood, their fingers icicles within their mittens, when that car passed again, headlights first, a blue sedan with chains wrapped so tightly around its tires they didn’t so much as jingle, pausing in front of their house […]
I was a reluctant crime fiction reviewer. I never rarely want to make another writer feel bad, and writing is a small world and feels like one in which every writer knows each other, particularly in my genre. And I know how much a bad review can bother someone. Some writers defiantly claim that they […]
Reggie, Do you remember the pact we made? It was like 7 or 8 in the morning and I knew you hadn’t slept much cause neither had I, and you had been ranting again about Josie’s new guy which you always did when you had too many shots and you got all quiet and asked […]
Locals whisper it’s graffiti, but it’s more like appliqué quilting, except I do it on our white farmhouse so everyone can see. A quilt is a gift of love, pieces of fabric that embody a person’s life, stitched together to carry memory. I spent winter months in the cold barn jigsawing plywood shapes, sanding, painting, […]
The house seemed very empty after my wife left. Not many square feet to fill, just a little bungalow in an old neighborhood near Santa Cruz’s boat harbor. Close enough to the beach, though, to hear the waves tumbling at night. Inherited from a bachelor great-uncle…otherwise, I never could have afforded it. Timing was perfect: […]
“There used to be more fireflies when I was a little girl,” Mom tells me. “I used to catch them, just like you.” At this she boops my nose. My repurposed Peter Pan peanut butter jar winks neon yellow-green from the fireflies I caught before dinner. When I was really little, Mom used to come […]
My first teaching job was in 2009, at a public high school in New Orleans. I was hired as the science teacher two days before the school year began. Here’s me: an earnest, lanky, white kid, about fifteen minutes older than my oldest student. My oldest student: a parent, an emcee, a Katrina refugee returning […]
In February of 1974, my wife and I bought a hundred-year-old farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania for $22,900. Working with my hands was not something I was accustomed to doing. By the time we left, four years later, I had built almost everything in it. The house sat on Ranch Road, on Hanlon Hill, in the […]
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 […]
By Charlotte Hamrick Today, June 17, is the four-year anniversary of The Nitty Gritty column here at Reckon Review. I want to take this opportunity to thank EiC Meagan Lucas for giving me complete freedom to do my thing with this column. It’s been a pleasure to talk to writers about their books and I’ve […]
