The Missing Sugar of 1981 The footloose villages of her own probable Argentina have been meadowed now and pastured. She’s a gutter-cat licking the bakery window. The storage space her brain built flooded. If you didn’t know the river, you might think it doesn’t bite. I’m speaking of intentions now in an old suit worn like moss. I can’t wave goodbye in Spanish or collect branches, water roots, prune envy. Gratitude doesn’t live here. The cat’s still pretending to be just a cat. The yellow wolf of uncertainty comes calling. You don’t even trust … Continue reading The Missing Sugar of 1981 by Rich Ives→
Stranger Among Other Phantoms Someone invisibly disturbs several finished Cigarette butts and barely gathers a nod At the acceleration of a crowd. The ticket Line’s for impatient aches – there’s no wit to dissuade The routine. Stalked by clumsy bags and instruments, Commuters and distance travelers, the rich and Penny-counters, four handsome students and a fat, Unscrubbed sort—all defended by miscellany— Compete for angles and rewards. Mostly, They fidget and don’t quite ask a question, while glares Perform the reproof of an agent, who slowly counts Light change or lengthy tickets and who replies … Continue reading Stranger Among Other Phantoms by Chester Johnson→
Invitation to an Empty Church In the rafters: hungry, silent mice. Down below: the civilized ask light to forgive them mediocrity. The light they seek is a cage in the rafters above glass stained in saviors, where holes fall from holes in the ceiling. The women pass coins onto plates like brooches to grandchildren who will never wear them. Someone knocks at the sealed door but won’t be let in. Nobody remembers how they entered or if light ever completes. A great voice asks the windows mirror-questions, and we pretend we haven’t lost our … Continue reading Invitation to an Empty Church by John Sibley Williams→
A Meal in Honor of Someone Once Beautiful My God. Preacher, pass the silence. Stop talking. The whir of desperate voices cloud thick air, fill our glasses to the brim, shocking one empty chair before flowers, china & shroud. Enough is enough. For heaven’s sake. We squeeze as twisted thread. Passing through the eye of sorrow’s needle making our way to the far side of this dread meal of death, bread & wine. Bent fetal. Enough is too much. Susan Cunningham is a therapist and poet. She holds master’s degrees in education as well … Continue reading A Meal in Honor of Someone Once Beautiful by Susan Cunningham→
I Was Born Too Soon After I was born in a crowded chorus of blizzard gusts, combing the darkness ten tiny fingers (one for every day I hung around the womb past due). I breathed in my mother’s grief, humming through skin and limbs, and we shared the electricity of your ghost, your face descending in swollen vessels circled tunnels, deep and long, honey thick and just as slow moving from her heart to mine, the one still forming. And when the hospital lights won out my leathery defiance, I searched the … Continue reading I Was Born Too Soon After by Alison Schreck→
The Universe May Expand Forever The fan blades spin large in your pupils, imperturbable peepers as a pilot’s. I am reflected in the corner of your eye, feeding you, and we are just mesmerized, aren’t we? Your thousand-yard stare to my closest attention. As you gulp the last drops of formula, I look down a glass telescope into your gullet. Past the curled tongue and pink gums, I can see you expand across your body from a radiant of light therein. Your vessel, something so small and still that your warmth nearly burning through … Continue reading The Universe May Expand Forever by James Fishwick→
Between Worlds for Margie Her arms flutter, as if to flee her body, the milk glass hands skimming sheets like autumn wings: thumb and fingers open and close, perhaps to pluck a word, sometimes pointing to say a name or spread into a trembling fan as lungs surge inside her chest, the way that burst of sparrow, trapped on my sun porch, charged the frantic air, beating, beating against God’s hard light. Wavering Place I’m slowly bringing things back, … Continue reading Between Worlds; Wavering Place by Diana Pinckney→
Fence for Margie She built that fence in the snow. All we saw of her was her red anorak and the upward flash of her tool, a hammer. Later, after her husband died and we tried to visit she wouldn’t come to the door. Now all that’s left is that fence, weathered, sturdy, still barring us, though she has moved away. She took her dog with her but she left the dish behind. Now, it sits there like a bright blue plug. We think if we remove it the whole yard may swirl inward, … Continue reading Fence by Corey Mesler→
Being Me The Trip across Texas is mine. Well, it’s in my name. The bank picks up the tab, I grab the fantasy: he practices my autograph in a cheap motel like a kid does Mickey Mantle’s. His girlfriend is horny, pretty and young, naked but for an anklet with chain linked to a ring on her toe. Her thighs are tattooed with flames. He says, “Wait one Goddamn minute,” goes out to test my card on a carton of Camels, beer and a convenience store rose. “YES, YES,” she shouts applauding his success. … Continue reading Being Me by Thomas Michael McDade→
Accidental Stowaway from Singapore, no papers or passport, surname unknown, Short-tailed Babbler, Japanese White-eye, Orange-bellied Flowerpecker, whoever you are, passing passerine, drawn to perch on a lifeboat winch by some crumb or flash of an earring as tugs yank the ship out into channel and two days later, in the South China Sea, you’re stuck too, nowhere to flee from here to horizon, as shown by forays of fluttering panic over the waves and back before exhaustion drowns you, little prisoner, condemned to be transported to a dirtier city, or if you hang on … Continue reading Accidental by Stephen Cushman→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
