Rebecca Watkins has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin.” —The Metamorphosis *** It was winter, 2021 when my first Nespresso machine, Helga, died. I am not the kind of person who names my personal belongings, but I figure it would be more enjoyable to read “The Story of Helga” instead of “The Story of the Nespresso Machine,” so I am calling her Helga. I had noticed, once or … Continue reading Cockroaches in Coffee Pots by Rebecca Watkins→
Philip Newman Lawton has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest My sister Margaret is dead. Her body has gone to cinders, her pain, blown away like smoke. I want to remember her as a child, go back far enough to trace the whole arc of her existence, make sense of it, figure out why she lived and died the way she did, but we grew up in a dysfunctional family, an alcoholic father, a hand-wringing mother, and I was prone to lose myself in books and daydreams. My memories are in … Continue reading Deus Absconditus by Philip Newman Lawton→
Karen Dolan has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest I had seen the penis on the ultrasound, I knew I was having a boy. What I didn’t know was that I was wrong. “Stop it with all the questions!” the midwife barks in response to my questions about a possible epidural. “This isn’t a think tank.” This is a dig at me and my employment at–indeed–a Washington, DC think tank. I feel like I’m in a medieval torture chamber and my captor is commanding me to shut up, lay back, and … Continue reading The Earth is Round by Karen Dolan→
Katherine Slaughter has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest Oppenheimer: Back to the Future In the movie theater, I clenched my shoulders and hunched in anticipation of the blast; I could feel the tightness in my jaw. The time between the image and the subsequent sound of the explosion was akin to the space between a lightning strike and a thunderous storm: the interminable wait until the explosion erupted with all its furious sound. Viscerally, I had a sense of generational deja vu. I had grown up in the 1940s and … Continue reading The Oppenheimer Retrospective by Katherine Slaughter→
Sandra Hopkins is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest How did my grandpa, Papa Hop, know that it would be impossible for me not to put my tongue in the space where my first baby tooth had come out? How could he predict that all on its own my untamed tongue would find my soft, raw gum and seek to massage it? I wanted a gold tooth just like his. His teeth gleamed as he spoke. A piece of Timothy hay he was chewing on moved up and down as he … Continue reading Tongues of Fire by Sandra Hopkins→
Jeanne Malmgren is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest This should be a quick in-and-out, I’m thinking. As we walk into the Department of Motor Vehicles, I’m cheered to see the line isn’t too long. We’re here for a simple errand, to change our driver’s licenses from Florida to South Carolina. It’s as mundane as any of the other chores related to moving to a new state. This DMV office is home turf for me. It’s just down the road from the country hospital where I was born. This is the … Continue reading Blindsided by Jeanne Malmgren→
Avery Roche is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest Pain. This is a word I am intimately familiar with. In fact, it is at the heart of my whole testimony. Everyone has their own unique relationship with pain. Their own horror stories. Their own way of surviving it. Some have been tossed deep into its depth. Some have been cut brushing along its sharp edges. Some have only gotten close by peering through a window into someone else’s suffering. Before, I might have claimed to understand pain. I might have said … Continue reading Stop Shivering by Avery Roche→
Mary Alice Hostetter has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest There was no real reason for volcanoes and pandemics to become associated in my imagination, but they did. The only actual link was on the first post-pandemic travel my wife and I did to visit family on the West Coast. While there, we went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor to see the exhibit with the less-than-upbeat title, “Last Supper in Pompeii.” It was a celebration of food and drink, with frescoes and kitchen utensils, crockery and furniture, delicate … Continue reading Considering Volcanoes: What Lies Beneath by Mary Alice Hostetter→
Amy Boyes has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest The hibiscuses arrived in six-inch grower pots. Packed for cold weather in a foil and Styrofoam-lined box, they had journeyed in a transport trailer to my grandmother’s prairie flower shop. “Careful, those are live plants!” Grandma would warn, as if “LIVE PLANTS” emblazed on the cardboard box was an insufficient indication. Deposited on the shop floor, the box remained until a knife or pair of scissors could be fetched. Typically, neither was found and a substitute tool was employed—pruning clippers or even … Continue reading The Hibiscus by Amy Boyes→
Jeffrey Coughter has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest On a sunny, breezy late October morning in 1959, I was among a handful of kindergartners waiting for a school bus near the front stoop of Boucher’s, a restaurant at the corner of Long Ridge Road and Stark Place in Stamford, Conn. The bus was late, but we didn’t know how late. We were all five, or nearly five years old, and “time,” when you’re five is not quite the same as when you’re sixty-five. We waited that crisp, autumn morning, as … Continue reading The Bus Was Late: a Stamford Memory by Jeffrey Coughter→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
