In June of 2007, I watched the movie Once with you. We’d rented the DVD from Blockbuster, the way people did then. We were twenty-one, so dinner meant sharing a bag of corn chips, drinking Coronas, and sitting on that funky old couch I bought cheap at an estate sale. That was back when we were still a couple living together in Seattle, and we’d only ever been with each other, and we loved each other, but we wondered what else was out there. And in the movie Once, two musicians meet in Dublin, a … Continue reading Mulioo Tebe by Clare Rolens→
The spirit room is cold, not morgue-cold but goosebump chilly from October on. Maddie zips her hoodie and pulls the under-desk heater dangerously close to the soles of her dying Nikes. There’s a hole forming above her big, left toe and if she smells melting rubber, there will be a bigger hole in her budget. New shoes will have to get in line. The positions she had tried for, production artist, illustrator, assistant gallery curator, never materialized, and she’s stuck in the basement of the Sabine River precinct as a bottom-dwelling, part-time police sketch artist, … Continue reading The Spirit Room by Claire Massey→
After lunch, Donald’s art dealer, Regina Slabokoff, entered his office in a state of agitated grace. Donald’s office had a style—a Mojo style—created by the great man himself. Mojo believed in comfort and security, and for Donald he had designed a desk in which his client could sit in its middle, as though in the center of a round doughnut. By pressing a button, foam panels rose and enveloped the sitter who then had the feeling of being back in the womb. It could also be used as a couch for afternoon siestas, thus eliminating … Continue reading The Art of the Dealer by Eric Lande→
The appointment was made for five-thirty so my wife Polly and I could both be there. She worked in an office in town and I was working from home then. But my work had been slow so I really wasn’t doing much of anything at work, and when I was awoken by a knock at the front door I sat up on the couch and looked at the clock and saw that it was a quarter to five. When I opened the door an overweight man in his sixties, wearing a white dress shirt … Continue reading Hard Water by S. E. Wilson→
9 a.m. ‘M’ comes out of his flat. I see his head first, coming up the basement steps. He needs a haircut. And he’s wearing the same shirt he had on yesterday. He’s let things slide. The way he’s standing, tapping the pavement with his cane and moving his weight back and forwards, either he’s in pain or he can’t make his mind up whether to go left or right. Sometimes when he just stands there, I know it’s because he senses someone watching him. Once, I was concentrating on a patch of leg … Continue reading Ground Zero by Lynn Bushell→
The fear of losing you torments me. Krenshaw’s roommate, Annie Alessandra, was dating Tommy Stalwart. Krenshaw had introduced them a few months back and it seemed like things were going well. Krenshaw was happy for them. But she was also sad. Seeing the two of them together reminded her of what she used to have with Memphis Jericho. Krenshaw had fallen for Memphis after dating him for a few months. Then, he broke up with her, saying he wasn’t as physically attracted to Krenshaw as he hoped he’d be. Krenshaw was confused by this. She … Continue reading Krenshaw and the Tale of Memphis by Karys Rhea→
It rained the day before so burying the cat wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. She found a shovel in the shed, and wrapped her pet in an old towel and a grocery bag and put it in the hole like that, not wanting to see the life gone from his eyes. She shoveled the dirt back, then walked in the woods that bordered their two acres until she found a sufficient rock to keep animals from digging him up. She had met the truck for the delivery of the beds and … Continue reading The New House by Dawn Abeita→
Immigration Service Camp, Kenedy, Texas – May 1944 Nearly two years had passed since a Peruvian policeman pointed a pistol at him and declared Tadashi Yamada to be “under arrest.” The employee of a Japanese food store in Lima, Tadashi, along with hundreds of other Japanese and Japanese-Peruvians, soon found himself shipped off to internment in Camp Kenedy, Texas. Seizing these people through a deal with Peruvian authorities, the United States government hoped to use them as bargaining chips in exchange for Americans held by the Japanese. But that did not happen. Twenty-four and a … Continue reading New Cut Hay by Lawrence F. Farrar→
They were back at the fountain as she had promised, Nicky’s sweet round belly against the marble ledge as he tried to reach for the penniesnickelsdimes tossed into that over-chlorinated water by puppy-love teens and small children who begged, like Nicky, for change, which she refused to give when he’d come whining five minutes ago, three minutes, two, one. She wasn’t about to raise the kind of person who just went around throwing coins into any pond or stream he saw, necessitating the signs at their zoo and the park with easy hikes. “Please do … Continue reading Fountains by Amy Foster Myer→
Beginning a painting was the hardest part. Each time, there was an anxious confrontation with the blank white canvas as he stood before the easel. The image was unstable and there were so many choices: who or what entered and who or what remained excluded. Gradually, out of uncertain mist, the charcoal drawing diverged forms from background with broken lines, cross hatchings, and shadings. With an eraser, chiaroscuro images were recovered from darkness. But the pattern was still tentative and required layers of color to establish meaning which was not yet knowable. On the … Continue reading Scumbling by Thomas Mampalam→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
