Reckoning

@reckoningmag.bsky.social

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A journal of creative writing on environmental justice https://reckoning.press

Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Copies of Reckoning X, 9, and It Was Paradise fanned on the Reckoning bookshop table at Readercon
Photographer Roseline Mgbodichinma describes this image as follows: "The boy in the image is my little brother. We were playing at home in southeastern Nigeria when I asked him to stand beside our masquerade tree so I could photograph him. He stopped, faced the wall, and raised his left hand. He is wearing a cowboy hat and a T-shirt with a stylish Mandarin inscription on the back. The phrase loosely translates to: “The fighting youth is the most beautiful”—a sentiment that suggests the most beautiful part of youth is the part spent striving."
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
13 issued of Reckoning lined up in chronological order on a table amid flowering milkweed and goldenrod. Notably absent is A CHORUS, DIVERGENT, of which I happen to be out of stock just at the moment
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Linocut illustration by Rowan Tate of a growth on a branch with many mouths emerging from its seeds, evoking growth.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Pen and ink drawing by Anastasiia Omelianuk: A merman regards the viewer with a disappointed expression from a flooded Ukrainian village
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Daydreams and Wooden Shutters. Mike Wheeler, Photography. 2025. “Daydreams and Wooden Shutters” reflects survival not through struggle, but quiet endurance. The girl, with a bowl in hand and a distant gaze, embodies the balance between physical need and inner life. In her stillness, survival is not just about food—but about holding onto hope, reflection, and the will to imagine beyond scarcity.
A composite image created by Tony Brinkley, featuring three abstractions arranged vertically on a black, textured background. At the top, a set of concentric circles resembling a plate with a bird spread-winged above it; the upper of the birds wings is missing a large section. In the center, a series of concentric squares and rectangles with what appears to be rubble in the center. At the bottom, a rectangular framed image with black and white texture appearing to depict three crushed cans.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
A brown paper Amazon envelope says "recycle this mailer just like a box" and I handwrote on it "reuse this mailer just like a boss"
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
A spiral with a black spot at the center, with each curving line a different language translating the sentence "When a language becomes sick of silence, the world it supports crumbles into a timeless spiral..." "Around 25 languages die each year; every two weeks, a culture, a history, and a body of knowledge disappears. Forced migrations, excessive globalization, colonialism, occupation, and displacement create a coercive effect on speakers of minority languages. I wrote this poem as a requiem, but now I prefer to see it as a warning, one that we can still act upon. Save a language, save a world." - Luis Rafael Moya
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
The cover art for Reckoning 9, "Open Chest" by Dante Luiz, features a Black woman seen from the lips down, smiling, with long black hair spilling over bare shoulders, wearing a lacy, off-white strapless dress, and using her hands to pull open a gaping hole in her chest from which white flowers emerge. The background is green and brown vertical striped wallpaper.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning: It Was Paradise, a special issue on war, conflict, and environmental justice, featuring a monstrous antlered head with burning red eyes and a warhead emerging from its fanged mouth.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Mónica Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
Auntie Antoinette, Nanan Gisela says: March 27, 2026 at 12:04 am In the harried pace of a world on fire, human decency no longer even a platitude powerful people bother to invoke, schools filled with Iranian schoolgirls being bombed into nothingness, your brilliance and pulsing heart shines so brightly as a reminder that our humanity still remains. Your words are salve and salvation in a world intent to beat us into submission. Maya Angelou had you in mind when she wrote: “And still like air I rise. I rise.”
A painting by Rain Jordan in which a dodo bird stands on a rock wearing a pink fan coral as a hat. In the background is a stormy sea and an approaching sail.
It is through writing that we remember freedom, as Le Guin puts it. Writers are capable of probing into the heart of the crises of our time: extinction, genocide, climate catastrophe. Diagnosing the rot at the source: violence, imperialism, and fascism. In a sense, these works may lean a little more into the mode of detailing the war that is ravaging our planet and communities, rather than than offering a restorative view of how the world could be healed. There is much value in this, especially in societies where we are kept so distracted and tired, over-worked and always busy, that we hardly have the resources to stop and say “this isn’t right.”
Cover for RECKONING: IT WAS PARADISE, featuring an illustration by Moníca Robles Corzo of a monstrous face with multiple sets of curving horns, exposed brain matter, serpents encircling and gorging the eyes, two sets of fanged mouths, and a warhead emerging in place of a tongue.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Graphic of a melting earth with the words Earth Day Rally, Oakland County Earth Day, Royal Oak Farmer's Market, Saturday April 18, 2026
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Catherine Rockwood, Ruth Joffre, and Andrew Kozma at the Reckoning table at AWP 2026
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Reckoning's green and spiny Maya style skull guy logo by Monica Robles Corzo and the words #AWP26 booth T714
Cover art for Green to Grey: An Environmental Anthology edited by Ian Thomas Shaw and Tim Niedermann, featuring green wisteria leaves with gray wisteria leaves on top of them against a background of creased and crumpled paper.
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Cover art by Mónica Robles Corzo for Reckoning X, featuring a purple fish, a brown woman, a green snake, red mushrooms, and the tail of a fox moving in a counterclockwise circle amid curliecues representing speech and communciation
Artwork by Daphne Fauber, "Creation", featuring a blue-eyed alligator with a human hand emerging from its throat to touch another extended human finger in a reference to "The Creation of Adam", with sparrows on the wing and a radial pattern in the background
Cover art for WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE by Syr Hayati Beker, featuring a mermaid embracing a fish with human legs.
Cover art for Reckoning X by Moníca Robles Corzo, featuring a fish, a human, a snake, some mushrooms, and the tail of a fox in a semicircle surrounded by curlicues representing communication, with a big black X in the middle, against a white background.
radially blurred cover image for Reckoning X, of which a big "X" is just discernible in the middle
Cover art for A Chorus Divergent by Abi Stevens, featuring a motif of lunar phases and a large psychedelic moth decorated with neurodiverity symbols
Reckoning 1 cover art by Monica Robles Corzo, featuring four different renderings of oil company logos as Maya style monsters: skull, tiger, dino, and red Pegasus
Cover art by Abi Stevens for Reckoning: A Chorus, Divergent, featuring an eight-winged moth framed in pink and orange moons and rainbow colored clouds
Screenshot from Majora's Mask: Dawn of The First Day - 72 Hours Remain -
A black and white photo by D. Arifah, titled "Water Bearers", in which a man in a pointed sun hat pushes a handcart loaded with plastic water containers down an alley lined with fences and graffiti-covered walls.
Heavily modified photo of a three-story concrete parking garage, where each bay has been replaced with a different style window, hanging plants, murals, and on the ground level, also a bike shop, a tienda selling produce, and a mural of a deer. In the foreground, a modified streetcar passes on railroad tracks. On the roof, fruit trees grow.
"Toxic Heron" by Abi Stevens is an illustration of a dead heron contorted in an "s" shape with a flower in its beak, blood pouring from its empty eyesockets, and a pile of trash beneath its spread wings including plastic bottles, a pair of dice, a fish carcass and a snail
The Reckoning table at the Royal Oak Earth Day Fair. Also some Stelliform Press titles