Ghost Story by Trudy Hale
During this time of year, they say the veil between the living and the dead is thin. Autumn stirs up ghosts. I have a ghost story, a true one. October, 1972. Memphis. My friend Mary Ann was five years older than I. Thick chestnut hair, agile and big-boned, sensual, moody, impulsive, a surgical technician, a Naval dishonorable discharge in her youth, rough, dark wit, and not a shred of ’emotional regulation’—the favored term these days. Back then we called it “wild.” I was a college theatre student and part-time waitress, renting a little house on … Continue reading Ghost Story by Trudy Hale
Eulogy For My Father by E. H. Jacobs
My father died thirty-seven years ago. I didn’t eulogize him at his funeral. I couldn’t. As a young man, I was too filled with rebellion and resentment to see what he was trying to show me. I only saw what he lacked, and his sad efforts to inflate what he thought he had to offer by aggrandizing parts of his life story. It was hard for me to determine what was true and what was not, which blinded me to the fact that no aggrandizement was necessary. I gathered from the little he said about … Continue reading Eulogy For My Father by E. H. Jacobs
Brimming Over by George Singer
For Joanne First snow has hushed the highway, yammer of distant coyotes comes to us as brittle and sharp as icicles dangling from the eaves. Without thought my mind links the stars and traces the ancient outlines –I read Orion standing roughshod on snowy Pine Mountain. No going back—once the dots are connected, those stories are etched for the duration, the stars never again a random scatter of pinpointed lights. The same for speech— we come into this country wordless to find everything already named and so contained by its appellation— once the red and … Continue reading Brimming Over by George Singer
Reverse Engineering by Fred Wilbur
While cleaning out our storage room of old magazines, financial records that might should be in a safe deposit box, worn out bed sheets, and a fifty-year accumulation of the miscellaneous, I found several small paper boxes that our grandchildren had made when in middle school. They were products of a three or four week fad among their friends. They represent a wonderful example of learning by observing, by doing. This method is the fundamental way of accruing knowledge: I am speaking of an intimate relationship between human teacher and the student learner. Those same … Continue reading Reverse Engineering by Fred Wilbur
Diagnosis by Andrew Gent
What’s that? I ask pointing at the x-ray. Oh, that’s your heart. Or a tumor. I should check with the radiologist. Don’t bother. It’s both. My heart is black. Blacker than any organ medical history records. Or so I was told as a teenager by a friend of a friend who was sick of watching me hurt her friend. I had every excuse in the book: I loved her too much, I loved someone else, I wasn’t in love enough. In the end, I hurt everyone involved and failed to learn a thing. And now … Continue reading Diagnosis by Andrew Gent
The Cat and The Man by Laura Halpin
Laura Halpin is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Flash Fiction Contest Every morning, the black and white cat is there with its white and grey pet, the man. By the museum building, by the library, by the ramp. The man brings food and feeds the cat. They converse, matter-of-factly. And people say. The man is off his rocker. Looked after by grown-up children who don’t mind his wandering because actually it’s nice to get a break. His habits are clockwork anyway, he hasn’t the wit to break them. Jabbering to the nice kitty, sweet really, no more part … Continue reading The Cat and The Man by Laura Halpin
Halloween’s Child by Ping Yi Yee
I was born on Halloween, quarter past three in the morning, jaundiced and with a hole in my heart. Or so Mum told me, but she was grumpy about what a pain I had been, so I didn’t push for details. All Hallows’ Eve—hallow meaning saint—is the night before All Saints’ Day on November 1, and is when the departed and beloved are remembered through prayer and song (vespers being Latin for evening). The practice goes back centuries, and includes a rich Celtic influence and history. We knew none of this growing up in Southeast … Continue reading Halloween’s Child by Ping Yi Yee
The Intriguing Metal Sculptures of Madeleine Lord
A ten foot giraffe. A ballerina on tiptoe. A gyrating rocker. The Angel Gabriel and an Artist in the Time of Covid. These are but a few of the playful and thought-provoking metal sculptures by New England artist Madeleine Lord. Lord remembers how her love of sculptures began. “In 1983 a widowed friend with poor eyesight wanted to attend the night welding class at the technical high school and needed a driver. I wanted to learn to weld so off we went.” She was hooked, accustomed to creating paintings and woodcut prints. “Welded … Continue reading The Intriguing Metal Sculptures of Madeleine Lord
Emily as She Spends Three Consecutive Days in Licking County by Darren C. Demaree
Allow me to be a reflection of all of her tastes, including that core piece of her that makes fun of me for not screaming the lyrics of a song about John Deere green. How could I truly love her without owning one pair of Wrangler jeans? It is because I love her I still drive the forty minutes to sit at a field party near a retention pond, where one of her friends, a lawyer now, shoots fireworks over a two-lane highway with multiple decorated crosses for teenagers that couldn’t find the middle lane. … Continue reading Emily as She Spends Three Consecutive Days in Licking County by Darren C. Demaree
Still Life by Mark Liebenow
On some days, the world stops moving and I feel I’m sitting on a wooden chair inside a still life painting. I look at the objects around me in my living room—the navy blue fabric recliner, music magazines on the coffee table, the wooden perch near the window where Sophie, my black cat, sleeps. The painting on the wall of the Mist Trail in Yosemite by my mother before she faded into dementia—the rocks, trees, and waterfall dissolving into colors—magenta, light blue, crimson, shades of charcoal gray, and forest green. The red coffee cup, the … Continue reading Still Life by Mark Liebenow