Sharon Perkins Ackerman holds an M.Ed from the University of Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Appalachian Places, Kestrel, Meridian, Broad River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Salvation South, and others. Her second poetry collection “A Legacy of Birds” is available on Amazon and her third collection “Sweeping the Porch”(Pine Row Press) will be published early 2026.
William Prindle has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2022 Poetry Contest Progress Report 50 Years after Reading Black Elk Last night in the silences between barred owl calls I thought I heard some people passing by the pond. Might have been plangent minor chords of bullfrog and fowler’s toad sounding a bit like human voices, but I picked up hints of Cherokee heading west, or was it Monacan disappearing into the high coves? I thought I heard bluegill or maybe perch rising to The surface to feed, but maybe it was only the sound … Continue reading Progress Report 50 Years after Reading Black Elk by William Prindle→
When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends Each family will have gathered what is durable and light. How far will the little ones walk before they ask to be carried. What else will you set down. When are we going to be there. Even our grief will not put out the fire. There it is, burning, lighter and lighter, singing into a mouthful of air. Chicken By the third time I checked on her, she had no eyes, just two white sockets where they should have been. A pair of glossy beetles, oblong, paddled in … Continue reading When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends and Chicken, 2 poems by Michael Quattrone→
When I was very young, I memorized the poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, unaware that I had been drawn into poetry of place. Short-sighted, I read it as a poem about the loss of innocence which mirrored some of my own morphing into an adult. Now I realize the poem does what good poetry of place does; it brings us into imaginative relationship with the land we have separated from. Loss of innocence? Perhaps, but more the inevitability and shifting of perspective that underpins our perceptions of home or homelessness. Many poems of place … Continue reading Thoughts on Place by Sharon Ackerman→
The vermillion sun salts our mouths, warmth brimming with the sapor of brine. I write on my arm the torrid air a salve for wounds pleasure can make known again. Why is it important that we remember the metrics of marking time? All I ever am haunted by the naming of things, the finality of definition of anything being anything more than what is. Fascinated by turning toward, becoming haloed from a moving silhouette— I write nonsense, vague and unspecific defenses, keeping me from being known. Next to me, someone is talking (to me?) of … Continue reading Sure to Glisten by Ashley Taylor→
Mollypops, we called them, stomping with our small shoes, heaving them like baseballs, bursting them green against the barn wall. We were children, seeking to destroy, as children do, leaving the juice-encased seeds to rot, perhaps reseed the pasture’s edge. Now I watch them in the garden. They droop egg-like, ripen toward yellow, draping palmate leaves like mittened hands sheltering blossom and fruit. How frail the flowers perched atop the leaves, a few still blooming purple! Passiflora incarnate, naked as Botticelli’s Chloris in her flimsy veil. Style and stigma, anthers invite golden bee to … Continue reading Passionflowers by Joyce Compton Brown→
Is it the nature of desire or the desire of nature to reveal how little we have evolved. Is it the few words of a person or a person of few words who commands our attention. Is it the history of violence or the violence of history that stirs our passion. Is it the loss of sadness or the sadness of loss that wakes the suddenness of joy. Is it the surprise of a gift or the gift of surprise that creates delight. Is it the loneness of a flower or the flower of aloneness … Continue reading What Claims Us by Diana Pinckney→
……………………………………………………………Inspired by, “What’s Broken,” ………………………………………………………………………………….Dorianne Laux The little boy who only wanted to be rocked on his mother’s lap grows to desire nothing more than to hop in his baby blue Mercury Comet and drive far away from her. The lovers who spent hours in embrace but grew to despise the thought of each other. The scale learned to precision eventually abandoned to atonal schemes and dissonance. The cranky white-haired genius who wrote that only two roads diverged in the wood when there were hundreds of roads, some with potholes, some never completed, some washed … Continue reading What’s Not Broken by Charles Brice→
What an impressive turnout this year! We received such a broad spectrum of poetry this go-round, such an interesting blend of sestinas, free verse, couplets and some that made skilled use of rhyme. As always, I am an apologist for contests; the talent level is great and the funnel is much too small. But maybe in some way, contests challenge us to bring our work to a level that surprises us and win or lose, we are left with that gain. Without further delay, here are the winners and editors’ (myself and co-editor Frederick Wilbur) … Continue reading Poetry Contest Winners 2022 by Sharon Ackerman→
Wall paintings are for looking at. Mirrors are not. Mirrors are puzzles for finding your way in or out. Once, I found on my way a geode thinking itself an unfertilized egg thinking itself to sleep but unable to pull up the anchor. I smashed it open. Dazzling! I’ve tried repeatedly nailing to a page that explosion to hang there. As a dancer, I find I have to dance again each time I’m moved as though the last time didn’t count. A look within finds DNA shared with many I was too late to … Continue reading Mirror by Joe Imwalle→
Ocean wind pushes the four of us with such force that we lean onto each other perched side-by-side on a pile of rocks – daughter, mother, daughter and the father standing behind. The mother’s face covered with curls, all of us laughing at the wind, camera barely balanced and ticking time for the shutter to open and close. Straight strip of sand stretching north was barren for miles, but for sandpipers, seagulls and the plovers who paused and ran, paused and ran again. Today, another generation of plovers, their sons and daughters still pause and … Continue reading A Photograph From That Summer on Point Reyes by Martha E. Snell→
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