2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Poetry Contest

mi gemela

i can hear avocado
trees in the backyard,
the hum of abuela’s
sewing machine
in the kitchen.

the plastic chairs
poke the fat of our […]

I grew up telling it to whoever would listen—mostly that fell on my mother’s shoulders.

At the breakfast table, at the dinner table, I proselytized with the fervor of a repenting sinner. And it beg […]

Ingrid Jendrzejewski is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest

 
Mare’s tails and mackerel scales Make tall ships take in their sails.
She’s studied the weather and knows about […]

Emily Larkin is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest
‘I’ll have a shot of anxiety with mint, vanilla syrup, and crushed ice, and a pint of despair. With a lemon wedge […]

Julie Gesin is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest

It’s dark when he reaches home and opens the garden gate, shoulders vulnerable to the pulse of crickets that rattles the gar […]

As her life changed so did the patterns of her art.

“I love patterns…I surround myself with patterns,” says mixed media artist Judy McLeod, a Charlottesville resident for more than four decades. “Whe […]

Dear writing one,

There will come a day when you will stop writing, for no good reason. There will be no drama, no single event that sinks your writing heels into the ground. You will come home from a writing […]

She was four-foot-something, ancient, squat, and elegant. I assumed she was Russian, though I only ever heard her speak once. She was born before there was such a thing as the Warsaw Pact, before the Cold War, […]

Ferment
 
Orchard in February.
Branches, matted as hair, litter the rows after pruning.
Soil, strewn with old fruitfall,
soaks in last season’s rancid sun
seeped from these gnawed globes:
Ambrosias, Au […]

Since changing paths on my photographic journey about three years ago, I continue to find great excitement and inspiration—as well as endless thematic possibilities—while experimenting with light painting tec […]

Swimming in Akumal
 
You could learn to live here
without ever measuring time
in linear seconds or distance
in the miles we journey.
Everything here is cyclical
and circular like the half moon
bay we […]

My granny Sally, who had a pillow-like soul (except for when she was playing gin rummy and this badass alter-ego would jump out and stomp the competition) used to warn my siblings and me to wash our […]

Sorrow
 
Sometimes I think I own sorrow
like the man who parades his macaw
up and down the shopping street,
shit on his back, smiling. The bird
is sweet and talkative, but
his wings are clipped. Sorrow […]

Of all the scenes I could replay to rewrite or undo, one I go back to one again and again.

It’s the end of my therapy session and I sit up and slip into my shoes, pick up my purse, when Dr. Bob asks to speak w […]

You’ve gotten over the idea that writing poetry is only for strange people who carry around moleskin notebooks with ribbon bookmarks. You may have even admitted to people you’ve met in airports, knowing you will […]

When the bus drops Diana off in the afternoon, her mother is still at work. She lets herself into the silent, spotless apartment, a large box of Oreo cookies and two bags of Mounds in her embrace.

Dropping […]

Podcast: A young woman faces the most difficult of decisions.

A short story performed by Jennifer Sims.

Read the story online: No Matter What by Tracey Levine