2017 was an amazing year for Streetlight Magazine owing to the excellent content submitted by writers and poets from all over the world. Our editors chose six nominees for The Pushcart Prize (best of small presses) for excellent writing in non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. We would like to publicly acknowledge these six authors for their incredible talent and wish them future success. Thank-you for allowing Streetlight Magazine to publish your work! Essay/Memoir nominees: Alex Joyner for Spirit Duplicator Anne Carle Carson for Sliding Poetry nominees: Linda Nemec Foster for Blue Brian Koester for Where … Continue reading 2017 Pushcart Nominations→
Atheist At seven I stopped believing in Santa after Mary Lou whispered to me betrayed by adults lured into an unreal world I stopped believing in the tooth fairy with her late night dimes, the Easter Bunny with jelly beans and pastel eggs and God But I am not a good atheist I slip into the back of Saint Anthony’s some Wednesdays at noon and sit in silence with the stained glass saints I read Simone Weil, longing for her unwavering faith if we ask our Father for bread he does not give us a … Continue reading Atheist and Not Now, Maybe Not Ever, 2 poems by Claire Rubin Scott→
a lot of roadkill lately. one sign of summer’s approach. dead foxes— dead birds especially. and once, on the main road driving toward blessington, an otter—an almost intact thing, a torso as thick as cracked leadpipe, lying down on the lines which bisected the lanes, and everyone swerving about it. april is indeed a morbid month, and it’s dishonest— sun striking the tarmac like water and drawing things in. daffodils rise, draping forward fat flowers with curl in the neck of a landed and interested vulture. folding its wings at the verges of roadside. strutting, … Continue reading A morbid month by D. S. Maolalai→
……………………………………………………………Inspired by, “What’s Broken,” ………………………………………………………………………………….Dorianne Laux The little boy who only wanted to be rocked on his mother’s lap grows to desire nothing more than to hop in his baby blue Mercury Comet and drive far away from her. The lovers who spent hours in embrace but grew to despise the thought of each other. The scale learned to precision eventually abandoned to atonal schemes and dissonance. The cranky white-haired genius who wrote that only two roads diverged in the wood when there were hundreds of roads, some with potholes, some never completed, some washed … Continue reading What’s Not Broken by Charles Brice→
the fancy radio my wife gifted into my simple pickup has finally died despite all manner of punching and twirling, little instrument won’t rouse, nor even static startle, and the bright digital time sign has flown silence, salient, at first, like a big embarrassing passenger, crowds the cab I pull over, pour a bit of citrus vodka into an empty fast-food coffee cup on the crow-rowdy gravel road to the river, windows down, an old channel crackles Ted writes, paints, plays tennis with Amy Lee. Nominated twice for Best of the Net, and twice for … Continue reading analog by Ted Jean→
Vigil Outside the nurses’ station, third floor east, twilight spreads its white canopy over the busy avenue of bright buildings. Down the hall, an orderly lofts a pale sheet over a vacant bed. In the next room, the ventilator pulses on, pushing a steady breeze through the cracked wall of a failing lung. In the dim light, the old woman tethered to a fever floats under the fluorescent aura shimmering above her head. Beneath shuttered eyelids, night pools. Right up to the edge. Work Gloves Nothing much to look at lying on the shelf, one … Continue reading Vigil and Work Gloves, 2 poems by Ron Stottlemyer→
Cottonmouth As the boat eased out on the pond, there was just enough light to see pale ribbons of sky rippling in the water. Dad paddled ahead with slow, heavy strokes, but the lives watching from trees, listening in the grass knew what had just arrived. As he rested the paddle on his knees, the boat glided on as if it knew where it was going, pulling a wide scarf of quiet behind it. Then the first deep croak sounded in duckweed near the far bank. When he dipped the paddle over the side to … Continue reading Cottonmouth by Ron Stottlemyer→
I went on a museum field trip not too long ago and had a revelation. I’m sure I’m not the first person to have pondered the following—but isn’t it wild to think that all sorts of currently priceless artifacts may well have started off as gee gaws shoved in the junk drawers of days of yore? I mean the pottery fragment on display could have come from a set of unregistered-for-salad plates some caveman’s new bride couldn’t put in the give-away bag fast enough. Or you know, accidentally dropped. In other words, it’s entirely possible … Continue reading Beholder by Erika Raskin→
Today is Nora Richard’s seventy-fifth birthday. She sighs, blows her nose, rests her head back against the scratchy, cheap couch that came with Apartment 205 inside Serenity by the Sea, an assisted living community she and her late husband moved into six years ago. Another long day stretches ahead of her like a superhighway to the moon. Mornings are the worst without Harvey brewing eight cups of Chock full o’nuts drip coffee instead of two cups because a full pot of brewed coffee really makes this place smell like home. Harvey’s baritone voice talking … Continue reading Serenity by the Sea by Virginia Watts→
back then on that Bronx block few of us stood a chance against reruns of Lynda Carter’s Bracelets of Submission…..truth lasso or pale décolletage rendering erotic doses of televised justice on a daily basis. but we all know it wasn’t just her alone. so many of the finest neighborhood girls played defense with both their hearts and breasts—and rightfully so— because we’d wetted our tongues too often just to get a chance to one day lick the closest thing we could find to a cinematic Caucasian nipple. and into the Internet and collegiate suburbs we … Continue reading Ode to Wonder Woman by Akhim Yuseff Cabey→
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