Allow me to be a reflection of all of her tastes, including that core piece of her that makes fun of me for not screaming the lyrics of a song about John Deere green. How could I truly love her without owning one pair of Wrangler jeans? It is because I love her I still drive the forty minutes to sit at a field party near a retention pond, where one of her friends, a lawyer now, shoots fireworks over a two-lane highway with multiple decorated crosses for teenagers that couldn’t find the middle lane. … Continue reading Emily as She Spends Three Consecutive Days in Licking County by Darren C. Demaree→
Moray McGowan is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Poetry Contest The waxwings that stripped our cherry tree’s last crop dropped guano’d stones in meadows far beyond the sea From the felled tree’s straight and amber grain we carved our firstborn’s crib From glasses perched upon the stump we toasted her first school day We watched her curl up in her fairy dell the roots left as they rotted back into earth, watched her teach her sisters reading and the facts of life she’d learned from books, her gaze on our disasters and her own … Continue reading Stone Circles by Moray McGowan→
David Hughes is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Poetry Contest This is the silence with a fault line. Not a void, but a region freshly mapped. The sofa’s middle is a no-man’s-land, a treaty’s definition. The air is parceled into spheres of influence: yours, by the cold fireplace, mine, by the window where I watch the rain. A sentence would be an incursion. A glance, a border violation. We have become two different pressures. You, a high front of resistance. I, a low system of conjecture. The weather in this room requires distance of … Continue reading Nine Feet Apart by David I. Hughes→
Nothing changes after the year we spend our Sunday mornings offering tea to the homeless in the shadow of the Mission, you know, fashion philanthropy. No paradise, no floats in the parade, no graphs moving up or down. We still wake up to the same mornings, our hungry souls staring at their hungry souls staring at our breakfasts through the television set. The last time I looked the world doesn’t operate according to serving tea on Sundays. It just keeps turning and spitting out more sadness, and we stick around for those few occasions when … Continue reading I tell my wife we are all drawn to sadness by Casey Killingsworth→
The last thing I drank was clear. The number of times I’ve had to repeat this reproduces, every anesthesiologist preparing for vomit, I guess. My apologies — I did not mean to spit that out, start your day with such a gross sort of showering, you alongside me, half naked on a frigid table, foaming like a geyser’s mouth. I meant to say something more profound, poetic, give you a peaceful tributary of words, a transparent shallow that, if you sit still in it long enough, you hardly feel anything but weightless. Yet everything known … Continue reading Prep work by Katherine Gotthardt→
how do i fit a city into a suitcase and how do i fit the feeling of waking with the sunrise or not sleeping until the stars blur how do i fit the scent of a rose peeking through cracks of concrete, fragrant plumeria blossoms lining streets, the comfort of seeing rows of olive trees little dots on a hill, or being surrounded by mountains wiser and older than all who inhabit their foothills how do i fit a city into a suitcase? the quiet nods as greetings of friendly hello when spoken languages don’t … Continue reading fitting places into a suitcase by Hibbah Haddam→
Last night the dreams poured in through the window. The plants, brought in for the first threat of freeze, let them rest and take stock on their last leaves. The dreams— knowing so much— didn’t know where to enter when I taped my mouth shut. And then they just became me, and I became the window, which amounted to nothing but seeing. I woke up in the back of my head and my understanding of the size of the sky turned purple, pink, and apricot. I think my place on this earth is in my … Continue reading Knowing and Oh My, 2 poems by Julia Falcinelli→
Our touring barge plows south through Mekong waters soon to arrive in the Delta. It’s been years, yet the names of these places are still familiar. Glossary of napalm and agent orange, of families fleeing, of death. I stand on deck and see a peaceful land, little battered boats, hut homes, rice-carrying hoys, their painted eyes alert for evil spirits. Everywhere in the brown current, islands of hyacinths float — invasive spread of jade leaves, plum blooms and unseen roots that hang in the water and thrive. Close by a flat boat drifts, nets piled … Continue reading Unseen Roots by Martha Snell→
I don’t blame my body for its language, for keeping its sacredness secure with words, its spleen tagging towards holiness and eternity, since I don’t seem to understand its nature, or why it mistakes my joys for sorrow, my pains for happiness, my tedium for freedom. I have kept the momentum of my dreams, but my body betrays me each time I reach out to have a sensible conversation about our future. It’s not too hard to make up with your enemies, except that sometimes they open the wounds from which you struggled to escape … Continue reading The Language of My Body by Chibuike Ukah→
I, who have never known love like this for my kinfolk in a burning world I’m tired of loneliness rewiring this brain, tired of wasting time waiting for the skies to clear, waiting for a turn, waiting for the urge to pass. Here, let me share this bread I baked, this salt, this god only a body can understand, I love you, here is a cup of tea, your coffee with maple syrup, the way you like it I love you, I made you soup, hungry for a kind of closeness like wilderness of hair … Continue reading This year is forecast four winters and I can’t save the burning world by Andreea Ceplinschi→
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