Spooned out formed by force of gravity diameter to be determined, from silver dollar to as big as a frisbee. Over burning embers, prehistoric ancestors flipped and peeled them off flat granite, their aroma luring cave dwellers from their hairy sleep. The same flapjacks I begged for at Bozo the Clown TV lunches when I ran home from school at noon and ran back at 12:45, tracking a mile burning off whatever I ate. Oh, circle of sustenance, you’ve been working class fare from B.C. to the 21st century or are you just the Mardi … Continue reading Pancakes by Cynthia Gallaher→
………………………………………….After Fragonard’s Les Hasards heureux d’escarpolette Fragonard’s lady sways among the clouds. while gentlemen pull at cords to help her float. An accidental shoe tumbles from stockinged foot. Ruffled and peachy skirts, pastel cushions bespeak her wealth and youth, her future set secure as the golden ropes she grasps and holds, her face as pale and smooth as a fragile egg. My brother hung our swing to catch a breeze to stop my mother’s racing heart for rest from housework’s plodding measured due. We’d sit and wait for beat to gentle down. I’d snuggle up … Continue reading Swings by Joyce Compton Brown→
I never sort my clothes. Sorry, mom. Sure, my whites gray and colors fade, but they all go into the same load. All share the same daily sweat and stink. I leave them clean in a basket all week and must sort what I may wear that day. I’m jeans or slacks. Oxford or tee. My socks match up—what’s beneath nobody sees. My machine rattles with forgotten coins, a pocket knife I never use, the odd bolt or rock I might pocket. Sometimes, I find crumpled bills, all crisp after dryer cycle, a surprise from … Continue reading Self Portrait as a Pile of Dirty Laundry by Jeff Newberry→
Remember that time you spent five whole dollars on a ticket to win a calf at the fair? What you thought we’d do with a little cow, I have no idea. We lived in a two-room apartment. We wandered through the trade hall, looking at things to improve and repair a home we wouldn’t have for twenty-five years, considering where a hot tub might go, if we had a place, or what sort of siding would look best. We made an investment in ourselves, paid a small deposit with a promise that, after a year … Continue reading Hope by Carlene M. Gadapee→
If you’d met him on a Greyhound bus in 1962 he’d have asked you to look out for Kerouac on every corner or find Mickey Mouse beneath a palm tree sweeping streets with brooms that danced themselves to life at parties just for you If he was drunk he’d drizzle Steinback over Shakespeare, float O’Casey’s Irish brogue on top of Tennessee, and wait for Godot with you if you got lonely on the carpet in your underwear and cowboy hat. Later he’d pour method into Montague, muddle warnings up with wanderlust, be once again Big … Continue reading My Father the Mixologist by Mara Lee Grayson→
Nonna tends Dad and Auntie in three room railroad flat; Bathtub in kitchen, 3′ x 5′ plywood tabletop, fridge at foot of bed, toilet in outside hallway with overhead waterbox and cold, wet chain hanging for the flush that suburban cousin Gina never could figure out how to use. Nonna fork-kneads one-inch pillows of dough filled with cheese, parsley, and beef. Tasted wonderful, even if too-many eggs and over-cooking meant they fell apart in grease-speckled broth. “Al Dente” could have been an opera singer, for all Nonna knew. She could not cook Italian: The ravioli … Continue reading Love Not Cheaply by Giancarlo Malchiodi→
Because we didn’t ask Abraham to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves. We don’t owe him any explanation. Let him think it’s revenge in advance for when kids snitch on parents. We know it’s a kid who kicked off the Salem witch hunt. We knew Shylock’s daughter ran off with his ducats, that kids would accuse their mothers’ boyfriends of all kinds of crime to keep them apart, then set fire to City Hall: We already planned to replace it with cheap dwellings all the way from South Street to High. We knew revenge in … Continue reading We Need Appointments to See Friends by Gerald Yelle→
My father stared at me like a rose full of lint. He was wondering how living haunted me, spreading through my face and body, how it serenaded me like a black shadow, this slice of stench, this mound of nausea. I told him that I would get married to her, the love of my life, the lint of my universe, the one whose smile cracked Heaven open, the only woman whose carcass cleaned me. When she lived, my parents hated her; my mother believed she had no home training; my father thought she did not … Continue reading A Dead Love by Chibuike Ukah→
In the century most recently expired, pigments to suggest certain fruits and vegetables were infused into the metal of appliances, plastic tableware, canisters for sugar and flour, even the weave in carpet fibers. These were part of a concurrent affronts to taste including deleted expletives of Presidents, the Fonz scowling at a juke box, gas lines, fear of toilet paper shortages. Then that ancient ‘fridge began leaking coolants. You could have bought new seals, a refill of freon, but there was a virgin Master Card for such crises. The clearance floor model was the only … Continue reading Avocado by Christopher Dungey→
I pattern through my day first thing, I walk across the green geometry of my rug telling myself I will stay on course, breathe rhythmically coffee myself up to start up my inner waves of can-do coming and going through tasks written on my straight-line list repeat my regularities shower myself with adulthood stand among the trees living above underground networks feel their energy, take in the reliabilities of exchange somewhat ready for small differences and changes in the flow and spiraling of conversations with the known and the unknown who may try to sprinkle … Continue reading Framework by Susan Shea→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
