Marie moved her mother Florence into an elder care facility only two months ago, but still got lost trying to find it. It was an incongruously red brick institutional building dropped into a suburban […]

I once held my cousin in a Dixie cup. At least a part of him. The improvised committal on the banks of Nottoway Swamp was a fitting send-off for a man who wanted no ceremony. Prone to eccentricity and melancholia […]

It’s wrong to feel lucky
when a poplar blooms.
…………Branches spit out slender pinks below low clouds.

In fields here, we find arrowheads.
Ancient whispers on the ridge. One death begs […]

Susan Valas is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest
It’s a drizzly-gray day in the spring of 1966. I stroll out the back door and climb into my dad’s Thunderbird with minutes to spa […]

STREETLIGHT’S 2022 SUMMER FLASH FICTION CONTEST
Send us your shorts by July 11!
1st Prize — $125
2nd — $75
3rd — $50
Entry Fee: $10

CONTEST GUIDELINES:

Up to 500 of your best, previou […]

STREETLIGHT’S 2022 SUMMER FLASH FICTION CONTEST
Send us your shorts by July 11!
1st Prize — $125
2nd — $75
3rd — $50
Entry Fee: $10

CONTEST GUIDELINES:

Up to 500 of your best, previou […]

STREETLIGHT’S 2022 POETRY CONTEST
August 15 to October 31
1st Prize — $125
2nd — $75
3rd — $50
Entry Fee: $10 FOR UP TO 3 POEMS

CONTEST GUIDELINES:

Up to three of your best, previously unpubli […]

This year’s flash fiction contest brought many great stories . . . and hard choices. (Seriously, it’s no lay-up trying to determine a winner when you have two judges with different writing backgrounds […]

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 […]

I wholeheartedly believe in the power and value of art—whatever the avenue. The act of trying is the underlying variable of my art education, from solely writing poetry to putting energy towards visual po […]

Erik awakens full of pain, lying in a hospital bed in a propped position, his throat sore from the tube that snaked down into his mouth and nose, his limbs heavy and bruised. His head feels like it […]

Was I crazy to want to attend two different public events on a single hot summer’s day? Maybe, but after two years of the Covid pandemic, there were a couple of Fourth of July events I really wanted to a […]

Catherine Pritchard Childress is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest
Offering food as a form of comfort for those in mourning is as much a part of my Appalachian upbringing as Vacation […]

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, […]

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 a […]

We had been married a little over a year when I had an abortion.

Put down your rocks and torches. If I had not had the abortion, I might well have died.

Not so simple now, is it? If I had been your wife, […]

Serenity by the Sea by Virginia Watts   Today is Nora Richard’s seventy-fifth birthday. She sighs, blows her nose, rests her head back against the scratchy, cheap couch that came wi […]

Stories by Sharon Ackerman I Like the Story Of the watch my father gave my mother how it stopped whenever they fought, except that is not the full story, the whole one. In […]

Who Killed the Video Star by Betty Wilkins Betty Wilkins is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest Rewind. By September 2002, I had been out of college for nine […]