The bat is so itty-bitty-teeny-tiny her body embraces only half my thumb, to which she clings during our first moments. Clings to with eyes shut: either because she naturally re-immersed herself in torpor, or from exhaustion.
In the first moments of Saturday, Aug. 12, 1995, in Shreveport, Louisiana, my older brother, Russell, age 42, was finishing up his shift as a minimum-wage, 54-hour-a-week stock clerk at Thrifty Liquor.
I never knew what to say when people asked me what my father did for a living. Sometimes I joked, “He’s involved with high-risk investments.” — “Stocks? Bonds?” — “More like ponies and dice.”
He held it up and out, away from his body and along his arm. He used it to point at us sitting there in front of him. Over the curved edge, he gathered us in his sights.
Guest judge J. Michael Lennon said it best: “Impressive and moving sextet of creative nonfiction stories; each has its own singular merit. Very difficult to pick a winner.”
His memoir, Home Is Burning, about [Marshall] and his siblings caring for their dad while he battled it out with Lou Gehrig’s disease and their mom with cancer, is nitty gritty reality at its harshest, complete with poop scenes.
The first round of judging in our 2016 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction is complete.
I never say abuse. Instead, I slide into cliché. It was no picnic, I say. Had a rough childhood, but the texture means nothing to anyone else.
Wet paint wrinkles up thin pages like the skin of an aging woman. A quick stroke of coral forms a sagging smile.
I’m alone in my parent’s house, painting the first floor bedrooms where my grandmother and parents usually sleep.
