Chuck Reece

1 month ago | salvationsouth.com | Cynthia Tucker |Chuck Reece

I first learned her name on the night of May 29, 2020, four days after her video went viral. By now we had watched it multiple times—transfixed by the horrifying nine minutes, a policeman with his knee on a Black man’s neck, gazing with a kind of reptilian menace in the general direction of the camera, while the life drained out of the body beneath him. We had listened in shock to the victim’s pleas, his desperate cries that he could not breathe, and finally we heard him call out for his mama.

1 month ago | salvationsouth.com | Laura Morris |Chuck Reece

Last week, I found Mothman sleeping on the back porch. He was curled in a tight ball, wings wrapped around his body for warmth, but he still shivered, gray skin mottled with icy blue patches. That night, I left a stack of old blankets beside the front door. He used them to fashion himself a nest between the banister and the grill that rusted through last summer.

2 months ago | salvationsouth.com | John Williams |Chuck Reece

In the shallow end, I found it hard to keep my attention on Kitty Bass or the swimming lesson. I was preoccupied with the ten o’clock bus. Blink your eyes and you could miss it—a double-decker! I’d never forgive myself. “Okay...let’s kick,” ordered Kitty—high school girl, bossy—with her usual terrible timing.

2 months ago | salvationsouth.com | Neema Avashia |Chuck Reece

Crystal Good and I grew up a few years and a few miles apart in southern West Virginia—she in St. Albans and I across the Kanawha River in Cross Lanes. But I did not know her, or her work, until I was well into adulthood. I came across her 2012 poetry collection, Valley Girl, and found myself back in the same “Chemical Valley” where we grew up. In a lot of ways, Crystal feels like a literary big sibling to me.

Dec 7, 2024 | salvationsouth.com | Chuck Reece

I. I was out on assignment when they chunked a brick through the newspaper’s office window. I have a general idea who “they” were, but “nobody” saw them so I can’t press charges. The Beacon’s secretary, Carmella, got so scared that I started carrying. The pen is mightier than the sword, but neither stands a chance against a hand cannon. I’d hate to use it. Folks who turned against The Beacon once happily read about little league, engagement parties, and Garden Club in its pages.