There are days I wake up in sluggish wonder, newly aware, as a last dream image drifts away, of the marvel of my beloved still beside me in the bed, the fan beating time through the air, and the persistence of […]

……….Hello? Is there anybody in there?
……….Just nod if you can hear me.
……….Is there anyone at home?
…………..Comfortably Numb
…………..Pink Floyd

He lay on his side
like a […]

ALLOWING THE LEAF

For an ultrasound exam, I ran on a treadmill and then was hooked up to a machine that showed my heart pumping blood. It was an incredible thing to see my heart keeping perfect time, beating […]

The Mojave, January 1988
Twenty-five months in the Army
and who would put a kid like me
in charge of a six million dollar
tank? I’ve got a crew of tragically
obedient soldiers, all teen-age, one
who m […]

These past two years and three months, since May 2017, have been a special period in my life that I hadn’t expected to experience. During my tenure as poetry editor, it has been my honor to share this labor of l […]

My father, every time I have gone home during the holidays the past two years, has been proud of his legitimacy as a businessman. He says he pays taxes upward of Rs.1 crore. He shows me his golden certificate from […]

The canary was still. It was too late to run. Too late to escape. Too late to pray for God’s mercy.

Matt had been one of the lucky ones, one of sixteen coal miners chosen to work on a Saturday mo […]

Stuart Gunter is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest.
 

Finish these sentences to express your true feelings:
I always wanted to be intelligent, maybe a college
professor, or a poet. […]

Natalia Prusinska is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest.
 

I took the jar of jam sealed with heat and wrapped it in old
towels. I placed it carefully in my suitcase among the […]

Writing my first novel was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It took me two full years to get through the first draft, and I felt like I was slogging my way through the entire time. I would write sections of the b […]

Joanna Lee is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest.
 

We found two dead babies on the back granite slab
that serves as a stoop, the same
we salvaged from up home years ago, decaying
in […]

It seemed to me to have been a long time since I devoted serious focus to my creative work—I mean in terms of organizing, keeping track, revising, submitting to journals, compiling a draft manuscript of newer w […]

In retrospect, I must have taken people by surprise, a seven-year-old standing alone on the corner of Cedar and State Street, passing out bumper stickers and campaign buttons for JFK. It was an act of irony and […]

Marco Patitucci is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest.
 

We measured small steps
as giant leaps
and never felt sameness,
nameless lunar imposters
dancing over the […]

You are quirky in a very classy way. Postcards and trinkets and such. You make it all so interesting.
Unathi to Anita
Dear Debbie,

Is your spirit smiling as I work on my third act? It’s been over ten y […]

Morning hunkered over the house, gray and unyielding, pressing through the spaces between the drawn shade and the window frame. Wes sat on the edge of the bed in underwear and socks, next to a […]

Alina Stefanescu is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest.
 

In my terror-hemmed flesh. The
wince against their raised voices of
desperate sirens, careful guarding
of pulse from […]