Mandarinas by Linda Laino
The night was so quiet I could almost hear the stars, that place laden with pines. Your eyes hard to read across the air between us, air you swallowed whole with I’m sorry, I need more room. But I believe in gestures, in the plate of mandarinas served at dawn, when you knew I needed feeding. Linda Laino is a visual artist and writer who has been making art in one form or another for over forty-five years.She received two years of fellowship awards from the Virginia Museum in pursuit of an MFA from Virginia … Continue reading Mandarinas by Linda Laino
In The River of Poetry: Contest Winners
Frankly, readers, Sharon and I were flabbergasted and at the same time gratified that Streetlight Magazine received one-hundred and nine entries to this year’s Poetry Contest. Talk about (early) summer reading! The average number of entries for the last four years (2020-2023) is sixty-one. I wonder why there were about three-quarters more poems this year than this average: we have added to the prize pot, have changed the time of year to open the submissions window, and we are beyond the angst of the pandemic panic. And maybe our reputation and readership are expanding. At … Continue reading In The River of Poetry: Contest Winners
Where to Begin Again by Claire Scott
I have discarded the gods like leftover tuna sandwiches stacks of them stuffed in the recycling including Odin, Shiva, Baal, Sango and Amaterasu bitter ends of unanswered prayers to pastel angels, scraps of saints and multi-armed goddesses all bling and blang no way to bargain with refractory gods no way to seduce them with hymns and chants dharanis and tallits and offerings of ghee hours spent on arthritic knees under overrated stars muttering useless nostrums my list of needs multiplying like dandelions in my lamentable lawn my granddaughter dances past her sequined skirt all rinsed … Continue reading Where to Begin Again by Claire Scott
The Shooter by Martha Clarkson
Today we drive north for an hour to find the snow geese migration. The geese are in the area for six months, so it shouldn’t be hard. Migration, as in come to roost. The barista in our favorite French coffee shop says, when we tell her where we are headed, “Hmm, I don’t think I’ve heard of that,” even though we know she grew up in the area and we just recently arrived and still know about it. Steaming our milk, she adds, “I once saw a field of swans, maybe that was them.” The … Continue reading The Shooter by Martha Clarkson
Goodbye to Love Atop Old Priest Grade by Mary Pacifico Curtis
I have a fondness for our imperfect union that started with a swindle – too much money for land and a set of plans that had hung over the place like a wrecking ball. I pieced together a story of miners and Mi-Wuks all faded from a view marked now by boarded stamp mills and raised wooden walkways in the shadow of the hillside cemetery. There were no treasures to be found – no spotted bats, burrowing owls, western myotis, Pacific fisher, Foothill yellow-legged frog, or even San Joaquin fox. No Mi-Wuk shards, no watershed … Continue reading Goodbye to Love Atop Old Priest Grade by Mary Pacifico Curtis
God Bless the 800-Calorie Sandwich by Angela Townsend
So, here’s the thing about the Meemaw cookbooks. I have no desire to make any of this stuff. But it gives me metaphysical peace to know that someone in Arkansas is eating the 800-calorie sandwich. The Meemaw cookbooks are the dozen Taste of Home Annual Recipes volumes I’ve acquired. With systematic, inexplicable pleasure, I began collecting them the week V. moved out. The 2nd Avenue Thrift Store asked $2.99 per candy-colored hardcover, so I merrily cleaned them out. I intentionally left behind the Cooking Light Annual Recipes. I can and can’t explain any of this. … Continue reading God Bless the 800-Calorie Sandwich by Angela Townsend
The Emily Dickinson Revery Construction Guide by Robert Harlow
Before she invented the ladder to the sky, she first invented the sky to have somewhere to go. Then she pulled the ladder up after her. But she was kind enough to leave a few clues behind— here and there— about how to build a ladder but without using wood, or nails, or hammers to pound them in. Robert Harlow resides in upstate N.Y. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, Cottonwood, The Midwest Quarterly, and in other journals. He is a … Continue reading The Emily Dickinson Revery Construction Guide by Robert Harlow
Flipping the Switch in Georgia by Gary Grossman
Did the G-d of the South finally begin perspiring and give that little knob a flick, mid-September or if lucky, August 22nd? Now the wind is an aloe blanket, remedy for a stove-burned arm—a refrigerator door held open for three cooling minutes; humidity an afterimage on my retina of summer. And sunlight glows like maple icing on a cake baked daily. Autumn resurrects every annual cycle, but peeling off the dried glue of August, I comprehend that redemption and renewal are all books to be read again and again. Gary Grossman’s work appears in forty-four … Continue reading Flipping the Switch in Georgia by Gary Grossman
Mimm Patterson Wins Streetlight’s 2024 Art Contest
Mimm Patterson is the Winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Art Contest Among the submissions that we received for the Streetlight Art Contest, Mimm Patterson’s work stood out. We were especially impressed with her encaustic collages, which offered visual complexity and layered meaning, and a quality of singularity or uniqueness. Social Anxiety and Murder of Crows both create the sense of a hyper-stimuli ridden, obfuscated and conflicted realm, one that captures a fairly accurate portrait of the modern world we create for ourselves. But all of Patterson’s works offer her viewer a richness of surface and depth of plane … Continue reading Mimm Patterson Wins Streetlight’s 2024 Art Contest
Candy Apple Smile by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos
Kat’s portrait tilted on Wendy’s dresser festooned with effulgent skyscrapers: birds of paradise and stargazers. A spent cork from a New Year’s Eve, a paling Polaroid of the two at the Whitney Biennial laid in front. Some days Wendy endured a seemingly endless passion for Kat. At some point though, exhausted by unquenchable longing, Wendy moved the portrait to the kitchen wall adjacent to the airshaft window, but there it gathered grime and the stray pigeon feather, so she took it down, tissue-wrapped, bubble-wrapped, boxed and labeled it. Like Kat taught her. She leaned … Continue reading Candy Apple Smile by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos