The first time I saw Bad Dog Ollie, he gave me the stink eye. He was in a large pen with a flock of adorable puppies, who ran and tumbled and played in a group. He stood to the side, staring up at me with his […]

To the new family I sent a letter about the house and our memories of living there for forty-five years.

I did tell them lots of information about the house that they needed to know. I gave advice about things […]

Morels

………………….For Tom Proutt

In my latest unsuccessful hunt for the unicorn
of the woods, I found a two-point buck skull,
a square of soapstone, a 1952 Mennen bottle,
and a foxhole. […]

More than half a century ago

(wtaf)

when I was five, my parents bought a DC row house that came furnished

(an estate sale? someone walking away from their whole life?)

with lots of heavy dark furniture […]

John Adinolfi is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest
 

All the times of their lives happened at the shore. She was a lifeguard. He was beach patrol. He tripped over h […]

Mountains Fall Away

When there is nothing left to say
I will stare out to limestone cliffs
risen from salt, the hawk’s sway
born of an old sea’s shimmy and drift

of continents. I’ll know my grand […]

A soldier brings his torn field jacket
to her
“So much blown to pieces,” he says.
She carries the heavy scent of tobacco
and you can almost see the charred buildings in her eyes like gra […]

Sending simultaneous submissions is a fact of a poet’s life whether you practice the strategy or not. How such a maneuver began may be one of those mysteries of history, but it is acceptable to most literary v […]

All along the coastline of Japan, hundreds of tall stone tablets stand as warnings about the possibility of natural disasters. Many date back to the 1880s, when two deadly tsunamis battered the coast and […]

Succor by Brett Ann Stanciu When the pandemic first shut down our world in the spring of 2020, my fifteen-year-old daughter and I were at home, every day, all day. I had been a […]

Masterpieces are hard,
manifestos, conversation
pieces are easy. Here’s
a woman who does sculptures
of babies popping out of
toasters, the whole thing
drenched in a combination
of blue and yellow p […]

Growing up in a small rural town, I felt a strong sense of family, community, and safety.

We had farmers’ markets, county fairs with greased pigs, hayrides, pie eating contest, cake walks, musical chairs, b […]

Margaret Watson is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest

I try my best to ignore the telephone vibrating in my back pocket. I focus on what I am doing–massaging St […]

I began photographing at sixteen when I got my first paycheck from the local movie theater to purchase a 35 mm film camera, a Canon EOS Rebel G. The camera then never left my side the rest of high […]

When I was thirteen, my mother left us. It was on a Sunday and she knew that Daddy, my brothers and I were away, visiting a family out on the old Nashville road. A moving van pulled up to the duplex and my […]

Jeff Ventura has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest
The love of a husband for a wife, of my father’s love for my mother, is scattered in my memory like peach blossoms after a […]

I found my calling on a bleak Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1958, standing at the edge of a fetid swamp, questioning why bad things happened to little children. It was the day four-year-old Billy Flynn […]

This is the place that emptied
my father, sucking him
through the tunnel of its straw.
Four days into a farewell
visit, I’ve overdosed
on sunlight, rousing the insomniac within.
The grass is g […]