Moray McGowan is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Poetry Contest The waxwings that stripped our cherry tree’s last crop dropped guano’d stones in meadows far beyond the sea From the felled tree’s straight and amber grain we carved our firstborn’s crib From glasses perched upon the stump we toasted her first school day We watched her curl up in her fairy dell the roots left as they rotted back into earth, watched her teach her sisters reading and the facts of life she’d learned from books, her gaze on our disasters and her own … Continue reading Stone Circles by Moray McGowan→
David Hughes is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Poetry Contest This is the silence with a fault line. Not a void, but a region freshly mapped. The sofa’s middle is a no-man’s-land, a treaty’s definition. The air is parceled into spheres of influence: yours, by the cold fireplace, mine, by the window where I watch the rain. A sentence would be an incursion. A glance, a border violation. We have become two different pressures. You, a high front of resistance. I, a low system of conjecture. The weather in this room requires distance of … Continue reading Nine Feet Apart by David I. Hughes→
Nothing changes after the year we spend our Sunday mornings offering tea to the homeless in the shadow of the Mission, you know, fashion philanthropy. No paradise, no floats in the parade, no graphs moving up or down. We still wake up to the same mornings, our hungry souls staring at their hungry souls staring at our breakfasts through the television set. The last time I looked the world doesn’t operate according to serving tea on Sundays. It just keeps turning and spitting out more sadness, and we stick around for those few occasions when … Continue reading I tell my wife we are all drawn to sadness by Casey Killingsworth→
The last thing I drank was clear. The number of times I’ve had to repeat this reproduces, every anesthesiologist preparing for vomit, I guess. My apologies — I did not mean to spit that out, start your day with such a gross sort of showering, you alongside me, half naked on a frigid table, foaming like a geyser’s mouth. I meant to say something more profound, poetic, give you a peaceful tributary of words, a transparent shallow that, if you sit still in it long enough, you hardly feel anything but weightless. Yet everything known … Continue reading Prep work by Katherine Gotthardt→
If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. —Charles Darwin,Voyage of the Beagle There is some question as to Definition’s whereabouts, its opportunity, its motive: our mystery character in an imagined scenario. The first place to look for the culprit is in the dictionary (any Google search will do.) You probably would begin such a search by typing “definition of ‘definition’?” It has, however, multi-faceted explanations (and I’m more or less quoting now): 1) the act of defining or … Continue reading Looking for Definition by Fred Wilbur→
Among the activities of our local Parks and Recreation Department are youth sports (including cheerleading), a genealogy class, bingo, adult softball, “track chair” outings, gymnastics, Taekwondo, a class on identifying and removing invasive plants, and yoga. The yoga offered may not strictly conform to any of the seven modern varieties or schools (other than the fact that classes are held in a repurposed school building!), but is exactly what most participants need and want. Frankly, there are as many species of yoga as there are individuals: every one’s grimace is DNA different. The class … Continue reading Yoga Today by Fred Wilbur→
A friend once drove out of town so fast he didn’t know if he was headed north or south. He just wanted to make the coast and finally learn how to swim. But that wasn’t true. I knew it was his boyfriend, the metal whip of his tongue that drove him to walk that bridge each night—inevitable as Persephone come September. One night after the bridge whiskey, he asked me to hit him and I should have said no. He said he needed a pain that would come and go like wildflowers in the high … Continue reading Not Unlike Damon and Pythias by Zachary Lundgren→
As I read this year’s contest entries, I accumulated a deep appreciation for the humans who invested the thought and energy to create them and who took the time to submit them to our contest. Thank you, fellow poets. We received 137 entries and co-editor Sharon and I have read then all. Our task was tough as there were many seriously contending poems. I found that I was in conversation with each poem. My wife thought I was mumbling to myself as perhaps a first sign of losing me. In a sense, my interaction with … Continue reading 2026 Poetry Contest Announcement by Fred Wilbur→
I don’t want to be eaten by a grizzly, my dad would say every time we were camping. But I wouldn’t want to be here if it weren’t possible. I’m sitting outside, daydreaming, when up the sidewalk strolls my neighbor, his torpid eyes fastened like buttons, his mouth a bloodless sphincter of puckered sanctimony. No matter what we talk about, he somehow finds a way to bring up my father, to remind me that he knew him sixty years ago when they were just boys. I don’t bother reminding him that I’ve always known my … Continue reading Bloodless by Martin Vest→
He perches boldlyon the old phone wiredown Canning Factory Road. He sings killy killy killya violent tune for a falconpainted in colbalt and rust. Sir Toby once disparaged the stanielas an inferior sparrowhawk. Yet here,head down, the wind-hover enchants his prey. Voles scamper into the marsh grass.Young hares cower.I admire his beauty, murder be damned. Marjorie Gowdy writes and paints on her farm at the foot of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Over a long career, she has written essays, poems, short stories, and is working on a historical novel. She … Continue reading The Kestrel Blues by Marjorie Gowdy→
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