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.
This is the light of stillness after everything has been said and thought, after the day has been brought to its knees once more, after the excuses, the bargainings with self, conversations that started so hopefully, but stopped. Don’t expect the darkened maple to turn over a bright leaf, find its own breeze. What pours in through the blinds is unmoved as the numb paw of your hand half opened or closed on the snow bank pillow, cold as the truth of its sleep. Let that radiance lift me weightless, timeless, into its night, and … Continue reading Moonlight by Ronald Stottlemyer→
In a dark subway tunnel between stations, a concave safety niche holds a grotto of graffiti unseen unless you happen to glance out when the train lights hit it. The moment you notice its radiance you’re past it, though if you close your eyes a vision of its brash vision remains. Someone braved the trains and third rail and cops to spray what graffiti artists call, considering the danger involved, a Heaven Spot. A Heaven Spot that tags you— in your own private grotto— like a dangerous dream. Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous … Continue reading Heaven Spot by Mark Belair→
For your birth, metal instruments sing you and your fluorescent halo into being. At your baptism you are pressed by the hands of power into stale water against your will. This is your first day of school: sick with the bus’s diesel fumes, tripping on the toes of giants. For your wedding the family dynamite flies in. Their coat tails trail with thick fuses that you navigate in your blue shoes you keep your fire to yourself as hornets sleep in the palms of your roses. In midlife, your parents leave you in explosive fashion. … Continue reading Cursed by Tess Matukonis→
I have a fondness for our imperfect union that started with a swindle – too much money for land and a set of plans that had hung over the place like a wrecking ball. I pieced together a story of miners and Mi-Wuks all faded from a view marked now by boarded stamp mills and raised wooden walkways in the shadow of the hillside cemetery. There were no treasures to be found – no spotted bats, burrowing owls, western myotis, Pacific fisher, Foothill yellow-legged frog, or even San Joaquin fox. No Mi-Wuk shards, no watershed … Continue reading Goodbye to Love Atop Old Priest Grade by Mary Pacifico Curtis→
Before she invented the ladder to the sky, she first invented the sky to have somewhere to go. Then she pulled the ladder up after her. But she was kind enough to leave a few clues behind— here and there— about how to build a ladder but without using wood, or nails, or hammers to pound them in. Robert Harlow resides in upstate N.Y. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, Cottonwood, The Midwest Quarterly, and in other journals. He is a … Continue reading The Emily Dickinson Revery Construction Guide by Robert Harlow→
I step outside right at sunrise when night creatures are still on the move. It’s a threshold hour, a groundhog slogs under the fence or a fawn startles, his mouth full of orange lilies. No one expects to see me, especially my neighbor’s unneutered billy goat who is standing on my gravel path. Of course I want to pet him so I miss something; the hardness of his horizontal gaze. He is challenging me. I consider myself a country woman, having stepped on a blacksnake once in my darkened living room. I shoo bears from … Continue reading Of Goats and Men by Sharon Ackerman→
Ty Phelps has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Poetry Contest Dolphin, with Number The city stretches out beyondthe marshland, lights shiningthrough the cold, graymidwestern fog. On screen,a triptych of images of a dolphinstranded on a strip of Cape Codsand. “Smooth as polishedgranite to the touch,” readsthe caption. The dolphin isred-eyed, face shaded with blacklike a great northern bird. Crackedbeak full of serrated teeth. Someone—perhaps a ranger—has painteda number in red on the spentcreature’s side. I wonder whereit will be taken, for what purpose,and my mind floats to a friendwho’d make a “porpoise” joke—she’s … Continue reading Dolphin, with Number by Ty Phelps→
—article title by Gwyn Wright, via swns.com …………….. …..Let me make light of the situation, travel to the nearest interstellar hotel. I don’t want to be maudlin, but I’m going to pack all my favorite mementos of mortality—a photo of my grandmother, the last slice of chocolate cake, and the only shirt that makes me look like I’ve got something going on. Believe me, I know ………….. ……..this is serious. There are lakes drying out, spitting up bodies and boats. There are fires so wild they scour towns down to foundations and loose strings of … Continue reading Scientists Say it’s Time to Prepare for Human Extinction by David B. Prather→
John Beck has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Poetry Contest The Driver In 1925, Pius XI made you, St. Frances, the patron of all car drivers. I am sure the Pope could not have imagined the enormity of the job he had given you. It is your heavenly mission to make my job easier. Every night that I drive for Uber and Lyft, please watch over the pedestrians who try to die on my bumper and save their unworthy souls. Please bless me when I am without space between cars as I move … Continue reading The Driver by John Beck→
Joan Mazza has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Poetry Contest We Left My Father and Sister at Home Because my mother didn’t drive, we took the bus to Winsted, Connecticut. Two of us alone to visit cousins on the Nicosia side of the family. They’d named a cow Josephine, after my grandmother, who took it as a compliment. That summer I was fourteen and fell in love with the scent of hay, adored by the kitten who lived under the house, and cousin Mike. Zio Nicosia, too old to drive the tractor, taught … Continue reading We Left My Father and Sister at Home by Joan Mazza→
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