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→
Cyndy Muscatel is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Flash Fiction Contest Dressed only in her pajamas and Ugg slippers, Rebecca grabbed the parka off the hook and flung it over her shoulders. The weather had turned cold right after Thanksgiving–outside the wind had picked up, scattering leaves and tossing snowflakes hither and thither. She shivered, castigating herself for leaving her book bag in the car. How forgetful could she get? She must have been in a hurry last night when she came home from work. She knew better than to leave anything … Continue reading Midnight by Cyndy Muscatel→
Dominik Slusarczyk is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Flash Fiction Contest We stay up all night drinking. When we eventually crawl into our tents the sun is already half way up. the rest of our party are getting up, ready to start their day, as we finish ours. —- “Being awake during the day is better” Jim says. There are multiple sizzling frying pans on the fire behind him. We are cooking bacon, eggs, steaks, anything the people cooking could find. The smell of the food fills the air and makes my … Continue reading Holidays by Dominik Slusarczyk→
I should have turned on the porch light, but the bulb is dead, I said, I had to leave her alone in the bathroom so I could stand outside and watch for the ambulance because the porch light is out, I wasn’t certain the EMTs would find the house, but she’s in the bathroom, on the toilet and can’t stand, while I was teaching a class tonight, she phoned the evening coordinator who stood at the classroom door and softly told me she needed me, but I don’t understand why a firetruck is at the … Continue reading Last Words by Caroline Malone→
What’s happening to me? Downstairs I can hear my wife Ann with our two-year-old Isabella, their sounds bubbling up from the kitchen. The scrape of spoon on bowl. The cooed urgings: Another bite? Zoom zoom! Izzy’s delighted yawp. But for some reason I can’t go down the stairs. Every time I try, lowering my right foot onto the top step, the padded carpet giving way, I start to lose my balance and heave myself back up, almost knocking the wedding photo of my mom and dad off the wall. I feel groggy like I’ve … Continue reading Downstairs by Gary Duehr→
It was a flat grey stone, the kind you found in tourist shops, with pre-set words. What a strange gift from Andrea, I’d thought, and plunked it into my pocket—carelessly. Only later, I found my hand often curving around it, feeling its weight, its contours. Where was she now? All those nights I found myself awake, throwing on some clothes. Inside my car, I cruised through the dead-quiet night streets. Sometimes, the streetlights, or the cold probing lights left on in closed stores, allowed me a glimpse of a huddled shape under a doorway, or … Continue reading A Stone by Debbie Bennett→
When he woke it was with awareness that it was his birthday and thus with an ebullience lacking on most other days when waking and rising were almost painful, at least relative to the contoured comfort of the womb-like bed that held him gently and all but captive. The hardwood floors were cold in the new apartment, so when he entered the kitchen, bed-headed and still rubbing sleep from his eyes, he was sure to stand in the narrow slats of morning light that shone through the westerly wall’s window. She saw him, smiled … Continue reading Birthday Boys by Will Underland→
It’s hard to know when it started—the hollow feeling when I entered my building. The unease as I unlocked the front door, like I was entering a stranger’s house with my own key, the yellow porchlight turning my fingers into ownerless digits. Always I expected the weight to lift once I’d crossed the threshold, or certainly when I’d walked up two flights of stairs to my condo. But even inside my own space, it was still there. Twenty-some years have passed since I lived on 19th Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of D.C., but … Continue reading The Secrets We Kept in Our Condo Association by I. S. Berry→
Kat’s portrait tilted on Wendy’s dresser festooned with effulgent skyscrapers: birds of paradise and stargazers. A spent cork from a New Year’s Eve, a paling Polaroid of the two at the Whitney Biennial laid in front. Some days Wendy endured a seemingly endless passion for Kat. At some point though, exhausted by unquenchable longing, Wendy moved the portrait to the kitchen wall adjacent to the airshaft window, but there it gathered grime and the stray pigeon feather, so she took it down, tissue-wrapped, bubble-wrapped, boxed and labeled it. Like Kat taught her. She leaned … Continue reading Candy Apple Smile by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos→
On a foggy dawn like this, at the edge of the cliff, at the edge of winter when the wind is blowing through the forest, all the ice chips clattering against each other, Ian loves the pin pricking ice against his cheeks. He screams into the chasm to hear the sound eaten up by the air. Later, he’ll commute down to town and anonymous himself in front of a computer, wearing his headphones, and typing, the words losing their meaning, his caffeine ritual keeping him going, but that wild place of cliffs, wind, and fog … Continue reading Ian, Who Lives on the Mountain Overlooking the City Where He Works by John Brantingham→
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