Anne Whitehouse’s moving new poetry collection, Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), takes us on four journeys, each with its pains and losses, its accretions of insight and moments of joy. In the f […]

It’s a long way down—

We start
on 5th Avenue:
all/that/claustrophobic/glitz.

You want a pair of $200 kicks—
so hey, okay kid
we get ‘em.
You carry that box the rest of the way.

We walk to […]

Solvitur Ambulando—a Latin phrase meaning “it is solved by walking”—is credited to the philosopher Diogenes in the fourth century BCE. He uttered this phrase when presented with a difficult metaphysical questio […]

I have worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain, butterflies in Los Angeles and lectured on island […]

“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
—Augustine of Hippo
There is a lot to be angry about […]

The truck stop parking lot reverberated with idling big diesel engines. The air smelled like sour urine. Randal Whitley stood by the open door of his cab smoking a cigarette and drinking his morning coffee. A […]

I grew up in Virginia Beach where I witnessed damage and destruction of rural and natural lands for the lie called development. I feel levels of anger and disappointment when I see gree […]

Genevra Levinson is an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
It is autumn. I think of Mary Oliver’s river of loss as I watch the trees burn fragrantly and allow themselves to be naked in t […]

ALMOST
A Steinway. A red silk dress.
The audience still, anticipating the first note
of Schubert’s B-Flat Sonata.
Anthony Tommasini ten rows back
will write
the most sensitive Schubert ever
in t […]

Some of America’s greatest photographers roamed the country by automobile. They forever changed the context of artistic imagery. They eventually replaced traditional monochrome with color, and they shot the u […]

Anne Holzman is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Flash Fiction Contest
 

I hear you before I see you. I start working on arranging my face.

There’s the ding-ding of the elevator, the door op […]

 
Leitmotif

You would think that as an artist,
I would not struggle to describe
the leitmotif of my paintings,        yet
I find myself searching
for identifiable techniques,
common hue or echo […]

I’m bored. Really, really bored.

Since the cases of COVID went back on the rise about a month ago I’ve been put back on shelter-in-place orders. Since my transplant I’ve been immunosuppressed, so I have to be […]

Learning the Names of Flowers

Each day, when my wife reaches inside
the mailbox,
her eyes catch on the bright morning
glories, whose vines have twirled up the post
with glad faces. Somehow they know, […]

You tiptoe back towards religion, in my experience, cautiously and nervously and more than a little suspicious, quietly hoping that it wasn’t all smoke and nonsense, that there is some deep wriggle of genius and p […]

Vicky Oliver is an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
It was an orgy of silk and satin and velvet. Twenty cocktail dresses sprawled on my floor, all temptresses still in their peak, […]