Reds caught a gun charge around the time my deciduous teeth started coming in. My toddler-faced mom — pregnant with Deion — clamped on heavy gold bamboo earrings and clubbed every night.
Straight Shots of Family by D. Watkins
Category: Essays
An archive of all of the personal essays we’ve published at Hippocampus Magazine over the years.
Sweating the Sweater by Jim Gray
It’s not that pink is inherently bad. I just see pink as the marijuana of colors, the gateway hue to the harder addictions of princess obsession and vanity.
Mirrors and Reflections by Jacqueline Doyle
Under the fluorescent lights my reflection looks unfamiliar—the color of my hair lurid and artificial, my face pale and drained of life.
The Marble by Renita Ford-Collier
Daddy’s in between jobs again, so all four of us are back at Auntie’s. I hope it’s for a long time.
Good Intentions by Penn Stewart
My siblings and I had stumbled down the walk hauling our pillows and blankets to the waiting car… the three of us piled into the backseat and tried to recapture the comfort of our beds.
Blue Eyes at the Wheel by Anthony J. Mohr
My father was an actor who was known for playing outlaws. The ladies loved him, and he had left my mother for one of them. Stan was a balding businessman … who acted, well, like a businessman.
Road Warrior by Vicki Mayk
My father never had a driver’s license during my lifetime. Family photos showing him behind the wheel of a 1950 Buick sedan proved he must have been a driver before I was born. I’d once asked my mother why he gave it up.
Blazer by Camille Griep
When we bought the Blazer, it was a kind of joke…Caught between city lives we loved and the country lives we’d been born into, we were torn between being the sort of people who owned a vehicle like that and people who scorned people who owned a vehicle like that.
Driving Alone by Beverly Offen
It’s a gray December afternoon. There’s dirty forgotten snow on the ground and a warning of rain in the air. It’s the Sunday before Christmas, and I’m going to a holiday party.
Silent Night, Firelight by John Redmond
I don’t remember any of the rides we caught that day between the time we got our jaywalking tickets and the time we were standing on I-80 at one of the Lake Tahoe interchanges.
