Nature itself is meaningless; it is only as we interpret it that it has meaning.
John Canaday, What is Art?

In our side yard a walnut grows. Higher than the house, it is 104 inches in circumference at chest […]



Podcast: What’s left after a bad relationship?

A short story performed by Joe Guay.

Read the story online: The Arithmetic of Love by Deborah Prum

At a recent conference I attended, a young woman stepped to the microphone to address keynote speaker Nick Flynn. “I teach yoga at the same homeless shelter where you worked in Boston. Your book Another Bullshit N […]

when the horizon dips
into darkness unsure about dawn,
I touch the faded photo, your face
still wearing a mere wisp of pink
blurred now into brushed-aside memories.

death is a trickster. it comes and […]

I despise Halloween.

I don’t wish ill of others. I hand out candy. I praise fairies and princesses, soldiers and supermen. I even humor parents who dress infants as vegetables or baby birds—but all the whi […]

All my life I’ve been attracted to weird things. And all my life I’ve been very much aware that other people think I’m weird for being attracted to those weird things. Sometimes it’s that I can’t help but be dr […]

Julia Ballerini is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest.
I was persuaded, if not coerced, to join a group therapy session. My boss was concerned about my mental well-being. I […]

From the Flume
The banks of the West Ausable River

Is a place you’ve never been.

Staring straight down into the flume

Violent bursts of water over

Great granite boulders mesmerizes

The boys, but I […]

So, you’ve read a literary magazine’s guidelines, you’ve even read its sample poems available online, or ordered a recent copy of the magazine to learn about what they publish. Maybe you’ve taken a class/w […]

because hope is a motherfucker,
i went up to each house of the dead
and knocked, but no one answered.

still, i am haunted:
the sun sets a little dimmer ever since the last
feeble twitch of that cat’s t […]

                                
I paint to find out what I think about the world; to discover the things I do not have words for. With collage, I love the randomness of the sn […]

My wife wants me to write my own obituary. Write a draft in the third person and revise it as many times as it takes to produce a short, readable account of a life that will make sense, if at all, only in […]

lopes as only
Hare can, all
fits and starts,
ears sky-sieves
for the whoosh
wings and clenched
claws make
as death stoops
towards him—
but not today,
the sky
bluebare serene
in the heat, the
great r […]

I live a runaway life. I’m a writer, a wife, and a mother and, like a lot of women who tire of the multi-layered duties that come with that combination, I need to get away. Right now, what I’m running away fro […]

Bill Bruce is the 1st place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest.

“Hey”
                                   “hey”
“What’re you up to?”
                                   “not […]

She’s been sitting on the feeder
since first light, gathering herself,
I suppose, for the journey south.
I wonder if she slept there, waking
for a sip from time to time, adding
calories, planning her long, w […]

Pocast: Coming of age.

A short story performed by Jennifer Sims.

Read the story online: Vanilla Music for Sinister Women Coming of Age by Mark Galarrita

I’ve been interested in photography since I was twelve years old. I grew up in North Miami Beach in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood. In middle school, my mother sent me about an hour away […]

Co-judging the annual fiction competition with Suzanne Freeman is a little like being each other’s plus-one at a silent auction. We independently review the wares that are displayed on a virtual table, offerings […]