The Long Goodbye The dishes undone, the laundry undone, the checkbook balance impossible to follow or read. Then, the falls. So many falls. It was dark, I caught my foot, I reached and lost my balance. And the pills. So many pills, under the chair, under the table, all looking alike, spilled and refilled far too soon each month. And the money, oh, the money pouring out the door on things you don’t need, people who scam and overcharge for services you have no need for. But we dance around the truth, making empty promises … Continue reading The Long Goodbye and Solving for X in a Pandemic, 2 poems by Carlene M. Gadapee→
We always seem to get the red light here, just close enough to Whole Foods to see in while the bus kneels to unfold the ramp that allows the ex-marine and his dog to board and position themselves to go. Across from me, a woman eats frosting from a container with a plastic spoon. And this early, the Whole Foods is aglow. These are the wives of software engineers or they are software engineers themselves, orchid-stem skinny, flushed from hot yoga, selecting whatever appeals to them under a hanging wave of kombucha Then a new … Continue reading Outside Whole Foods by Eliot Wilson→
A sky god laments unintended consequences, observing the artery that injects the city with Virginia. Suburban sanguines resigned to short trip long lines. Mr. Shirley never lived to see the six figure thousands daily realize his vision atop his slitherslow namesnake. Farther below, heads sway back and forth in unison like temporary bulrushes whose rhythms are enforced by trafical breezes dancing over an asphalted current. Only liars want the river today. Downhill currents defy gravity, speed slows as two fifths of the Defense Department drifts by, and the tourist landmarks peek out the tops of … Continue reading In Memoriam of Henry G. Shirley by Brannon O’Brennan→
after Mark Bibbins Rays burrowing in sand like hearing someone typing an endless suicide note in a room at the end of a carpeted hall, we go on believing that nothing can touch us here, though loss is like wearing a blouse made of a thousand needles, remembering the weight of the phone in your hand when the call came in, the body a snowshoe hare curled like a closed hand. Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press, … Continue reading An Ending by Adam Day→
It is our pleasure to announce the Winners and Honorable Mentions of the annual Streetlight Magazine Poetry Contest. How did we arrive at our choices? We read a lot of poetry. We are both writers/poets. We have, no doubt, the same aspirations for our work as those submitting to this contest. We are sensitive to every entrant’s intention and effort. Sharon and I do not use screeners so we separately read every anonymous entry independently. We then present each other with our preferred dozen or so and begin the back-and-forth process of willowing. In this … Continue reading 2023 Poetry Contest Winners by Fred Wilbur→
In the pulsing heat, in the black cathedral of war, the amber-tinted silver of infra-red illuminates a man. Nimble in the moment between the squeeze of the trigger and the crack of the rifle, he crouches and fires: stalker and stalked at one in the fluttering night. Quickly, the breath still held, a song arises, unbidden and sweet, and the pulsing heat and the heart conspire to draw from the murmuring air an echo, smiling, of a fond face. Drawn on the rim of this well of resonance in the foul, sweltering dark, other forms … Continue reading Elegy for a Soldier by Will Hemmer→
Writers or bloggers who write about writing often express the difficulties of practicing the craft in romantic terms of justification. Maybe not the physical pain of carpel-tunnel syndrome, butt-rot, or screen-induced headache, but certainly the mental frustrations, the endless angst of word choice, unruly character quirks or plot twists. And to end this state of anguish, these literary pundits suggest self-help books (disguised as instruction books), literary conferences, newsletter screeds, low-res MFA programs, or some esoteric meditation strategy. Anything for day-job relief. Trouble is, this advice implies a degree of inadequacy in the recipient. For … Continue reading Writers’ Joy by Fred Wilbur→
Fat Auntie Ursal with her coffee-breath, baggy pink house dress, and worried rosary beads would haul a basket of linen to the backyard, pick clothespins out of her mouth, and staple sheets to the line. When it rained, I rushed to watch Auntie panic-waddle into our backyard, eyes wide, rosary flying, as she pulled down the pristine sheets as if lowering the mainsail in a gale. Later, she’d plead with Uncle Pete to buy a dryer, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound he made while sucking food bits out of the crevasses between … Continue reading Laundry by Charlie Brice→
God must be, I dare now to say, like a cat, with His / Her / Its impertinence and delays in ordering our lives, loves and ways of being whoever we think we are, or might be. I’ve learned this from my own clever pet, Kestane, who is happily (I suppose) grooming herself as she lies curled up in the wicker chair across from where I sit in my rocker, having my penultimate drink of the evening and trying again to understand what drives us in our conceptions of divinity. She’s not, or, perhaps, she … Continue reading God by Mel Kenne→
it surely is the same wrinkled sky from years ago when i lived in dense forest towns when cold winds chafed Iroko bark like prayers chafe fingers. i smoothed my first grinding stone with rocks rocks picked from streets maddened from stoning thieves. i peered down wells and called to the nameless to find out for myself: guards of the wide road where mothers have gone mad where faint rhymes tuck into palms, love poems in vapors, breastmilk curdles with ghosts, and from mounds poured for the forgotten, i walked, anyhow, anyhow myself Liz Femi … Continue reading grown girl: she thinks of the dead by Liz Femi→
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