Let me tell you uncomfortable I am with silence. I am handcuffed to a joke I can’t tell. Two crows are where my lungs should be. My exhales are the shape of birds. This is serious business. This is an average Tuesday. Finger in the light socket. Fork in the garbage disposal. Recycling bin blown over by the wind. The week’s detritus spread out for all the neighbors to see. I’m hungry but all my knives are too dull to cut anything. The voice coach said sing from your diaphragm. Someday I’ll have an office … Continue reading Same River, Different Day by Patrick Meeds→
…………………………………………………….A poem is never finished, only abandoned …………………………………………………………..–Paul Valery In a downtown daze I trolled among towers reeking of success, rising proudly into the sky, and between them found an alley of orphans, all my incomplete gestures, children who made and dismayed me, never found a home in my heart. They fled the disregard to which I condemned them, banded together, unselfishly shared their pain and painkillers, and admired each others deformities. They tattooed my ink into their fists and waited, one-eyed and one-armed, (the eye full of spite, the arm heavily armed), hoping that … Continue reading Reckless Abandon by Dudley Stone→
My wife and I sought sanctuary by the lake, our two sons in tow. The four-hour car trip was nonstop requests for candy, cookies, sodas laced with anticipation, halted mid-sentence by the lake’s incantation: the first glimpse of cool, limpid waters and a sweeping lawn of conifers. We sailed among lake islands, swam alongside fish, dove for seashells among undulating stems of pondweed. One son claimed Lake George looked just like last year, emboldened as he sailed a Sunfish, while the younger insisted it was different every day. This was before we returned with his … Continue reading Lake George in My Heart by David Stern→
My grocery store is under siege by sleepwalkers who show up in pajamas moping from shelf to shelf for a precious memory. There is no one to guide them. Disposable employees are with- drawn or unhinged; I saw a clerk slap a senior shoplifter to the floor. The butcher who knew your name had a gentle funeral. St. Rita’s warm quiet bells called the old neighborhood together. Almost everyone wore their best. I watched it online in a suit & tie. Deli-lovers from bygone eras filled the pews with greetings & non-greetings. Neighbor-strangers are faux-blind. … Continue reading Shopping by Paul Joseph Enea→
Once mown a tedder spreads the murdered crop to dry, draws a swath, a windrow waiting. Three days of drought and the hay is fit to bind. Catch and stack. Catch and stack. Breathing diesel, dung, and latent threat, a shirtless boy, fourteen, the mud of field dust and sweat, scratched by each bail’s blades… until you’ve built a plinth above the wagon’s rim to stand atop — prince of something. Stand there rut-bouncing ‘till with one lethal bump, your hay mountain shakes you off. You hit the ground and roll to meet the … Continue reading Harvester by Ned Kraft→
“Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts have they really and truly any sense of susceptibility.” —Essay on Women, Arthur Schopenhauer See him sulking in the corner with his failed theories, posture rigid, tie-less Oxford buttoned to the neck. Only men possess the power of genius, he once claimed; the fair sex are mere distractions, vessels for reproduction. Art can be made of woman, but woman cannot make art. Now, everywhere he looks— female … Continue reading Schopenhauer Rues the Rise of Women by Bill Glose→
Bed calls at midday, when the eyes drowse and honey themselves shut. Sleep curls thick as nectar. We hexagon ourselves, invert. Always a sigh. Hours ripen sweet. We seal away. For a moment, the unbearable buzz subsides. Cathy Socarras Ferrell is a poet and educator. The granddaughter of Cuban immigrants, she finds inspiration in family story-telling and the Sandhill cranes in her yard. Her work can be found at The Orchards Poetry Journal, Santa Clara Review, and other journals. Readers can connect with Cathy at ferrellwords.com. Follow us!
I danced with a shadow, drifting in the wind, Our forms in ev’ry city window cast. We held each other as the night slipped past, Circled and spun in a chanted keen. I stared into you, where sorrow yields, Those hollow eyes where moonlight softly dives. Your touch slipped through my fingers–five to five– Like wind brushing through a silent mill. Why can’t I see your face, your countenance? Do you take root within my dripping misery, From mem’ries flooding beneath the city, Or are you but a flash of Renaissance? Should I still hold … Continue reading Dancing with a Shadow by Zihan Zang→
Buffalo Alice stuck her pig husband in the throat with a carpet knife. Made the evening news. Hell of a lady if you ask me, but I don’t get jury summons. It’s break-neck around here. Not enough hours in the day to earn. People pinched by landlords, business pricks, government mules. When nothing’s left to say, there’s violence– blood stains, lead paint chips, hepatitis. My last tetanus shot was fifteen years ago. It was white tail season, farmer Fred caught me lying prone in one of his hedgerows. Had my old man’s 12 gauge slug … Continue reading Concrete Staircase by Jeff Thomas→
we imagine she was a bride the skeleton with the small skull a Greek girl………… ……….her head wreathed in ceramic flowers in Azerbaijan……………… ….800 BC a couple was buried where they fell asphyxiated……………. ……by toxic gas their bones circled around each other 700 years ago two people in England were buried their bodies dusted……………. ……with pollen we hope it was … Continue reading Currency by Maureen Clark→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
