The first time I cooked rice by myself, at five years old, I burned it to a tarry blackness. My mother saw how much I loved to “help” her in the kitchen, so she bought me a clay cookpot and a small sack of rice to play with. I ran to visit my friend Yet, who lived in the village behind my parents’ house in Battambang, Cambodia. We gathered branches and stones and built a fire in front of her house, constructed of bamboo and grass mixed with elephant dung. 
 
As the rice simmered, Yet and I sat on the rungs of the steep entry stairs and stoked the fire while we clapped our hands and sang. I left the rice on the fire for a long time, to be sure it was well done, then ran home and presented it to my mother — “Mae,” as I called her in Khmer.

The Gradual Extinction of Softness

This time over toothpaste. 
 
No way some Colgate costs some $2.99, she says. It ain’t Crest! 
 
I don’t know the difference but I nod and cross my arms because she’s my grandma. I mean mug the TV, the contestant. We are ready to fight them all, we’ll even take down Bob Barker between our naps. 
 
My Grandma Gets Called to Come On Down on The Price is Right 
 
Maybe she’s wearing her pearls and best dress. A velvet hat. Red lipstick. Shoes with a short heel. She’ll keep her poise, won’t high five anyone while walking down the aisle. I don’t know these fools, she might say. Someone might bet $1500. She’ll bet $1501.

My Grandma Picks Fights with the Contestants on The Price is Right

Breaded Fish, Potatoes, Flavor Fiesta Vegetables, Red and White Slaw, Peach Cobbler 
 
They wake me up most days with a knock at the door. A blonde woman and her blonde daughter. A red-faced older gentleman. A man and woman in polyester suiting. A group of girls and their scout leader. 
 
“Are you Michelle?” Surprised to see a woman in her early thirties in pigtails and pajamas. They hand me a warm Styrofoam clamshell. Consult a sheet of paper. 
 
And then they are gone. Like handing meals out to prisoners in solitary. 
 
This is so not what I thought Meals-on-Wheels would be like.

Salisbury Steak Day

The thing about chronic back pain isn’t just that pain, which of course is sharp, and feels like someone is sawing your spine in two. No, it’s about what happens when you’re not in pain. When you’re not in pain – whether it’s because that day your spine decided to align itself properly and you woke up standing relatively straight, or because the copious drug cocktail you concocted alongside the awkward stretches you do seem to be working – you know it’s going to last max a few hours, so you need to get every damn thing in. 
 
So, you’re productive. You clean your apartment, you take out all the trash that’s been accumulating because normally you can’t bend in half to pick up the trash bag and walk it to the apartment garbage room. You collapse the recycling with vigor and revel in the smell of card box and Amazon tape, feeling some guilt for Prime-ing your groceries all week. But really, you spent all of the previous day lying in bed with an itchy ass crack since your spine wouldn’t allow you to reach around and wipe sufficiently, so how could you even get up to get groceries, guilt be damned.

Sharp

An exclusively online publication set out to entertain, educate and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. Each issue features memoir excerpts, personal essays, reviews, interviews and craft articles.

Donna Talarico

Hippocampus Magazine

Active on social media

Pays! $40

Promote writers even after publication - hype hype hype

Annual HippoCamp Conference is welcoming to first-time writing conference attendees

They also publish books.

Submission fee

I spent languid days at this beach, catching sand crabs by the bucketful, sifting sand out of my bathing suit, boogie boarding and bodysurfing until I could barely keep my eyes open, my mouth always puckered from too much salt water.

Home is a Feeling

On my birthday, my grandma loses her speech. Her caregiver thinks it might be a stroke. She is rushed to the ER and I visit her there hours later when her speech has returned and she uses it to introduce me to the nurse. She’s Romanian, she tells me

Swimming with My Grandma

"Sculpt the peaks and valleys of the flames as they caress her cheeks, her arms, her everything, and paint the man who went back for her and never returned."

Self-Portrait

Wet paint wrinkles up thin pages like the skin of an aging woman. A quick stroke of coral forms a sagging smile. Form the strong cheekbones and knowing eyes and you have Marilee, a God-fearing woman with an opinion a little too loud. 

Hippocampus Magazine

Chill Subs Tracker Stats!

Important stuff

Genres

Nonfiction

[ugh] feed

Masthead

Donna Talarico

Examples

Contributors on Chill Subs (4)

Hayli May Cox

Brooke Randel

Hayli May Cox

sara j streeter

All contributors (last updated: forever ago)