by Laura Marello Three years ago I phoned Specialty Exterminators in Lynchburg. My side yard, viewed from my screened porch, was starting to look like a cheap horror movie: rats, mice, and baby mice, running from my yard into the neighbors’ yard and back. Specialty Exterminators sent the rat baiter: an appropriately slim, tanned, wrinkled, grizzled–but in a handsome sort of way–sixty-something in a uniform much like a gas station attendant or a tow truck driver, park ranger, or sheriff would wear. As it turned out, I needed all five, and more. The Rat Baiter … Continue reading The Rat Baiter and Me→
A few years back I took a trip to Texas with Bill Clinton. It was not a fun trip. Clinton is pathologically self-referential and by the time he’d repeated the phrase, “Let me tell you one more clever thing I said when I did something bad,” for the eleventy-twelfth time, I was ready to leave him by the side of the road in Alabama. I sputtered at the car CD player (which is where books-on-tape lived before they became books-on-Audible…did I mention Clinton was on the CD and not in the car?), “I don’t care … Continue reading The Consternations of Traveling South with Paul Theroux→
Calling all fans of Streetlight and contributors past and present. If you are a fan of Streetlight or if you have ever had a story, poem, or piece of art published in Streetlight (both print or on-line versions) join Streetlight Lamplighter’s social network and forum and become a lamplighter. I am a lamplighter. Lamplighters unite! This call goes out to all artists and writers. When the nice people at SL agreed to let me author this post, they expected a piece exalting the virtues of an art community. They won’t be disappointed. But there … Continue reading Gather Around the Light→
See who’s in focus at this year’s Look3 Festival of the Photograph, June 13 through 19 in Charlottesville. One of 11 featured artists, National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting launches the week with his natural history images hanging from the TREES on the downtown mall. Showing the world through animals’ eyes, Lanting says his mission is to use photography to help create leverage for conservation efforts from local initiatives to global campaigns. He’ll discuss his mission at 7:30-9 p.m. Wednesday June 15 at the Paramount Theater. “No one turns animals into art more completely than Frans … Continue reading Look3 Festival of the Photograph→
By Laura Marello Imagine that, 20 years ago, my father and I were visiting my sister in her apartment. It was a warm, sunny day. My sister was making us ice tea. I was sitting in the living room with my father. He was complaining about his wife and her children. He said: Sometimes I want to take the gun out of the drawer and shoot the whole lot of them. I thought, The gun, out of the drawer? Not a gun out of a drawer? Articles matter. For another example, let us consider … Continue reading Articles Matter→
By Katie Davis Around Washington people say Anacostia as a code word for poverty, crime, isolation. Many add in a low voice, “Don’t go there.” In fact, a city-wide website left it off the map entirely and pushed Virginia up into D.C.. I say, go to Anacostia in South East Washington while it is still a mostly black neighborhood with a rich history. Cross the Anacostia River, not something most white Washingtonians (including me) have often done. Walk along Martin Luther King Avenue and see the life sized posters pasted onto the walls, a … Continue reading Anacostia Unmapped→
By Laura Marello I’d never owned a house before, and when I finally bought one in Lynchburg, I found that I enjoyed decorating it. The rooms would take on a life of their own, sometimes a history of their own as I began to decorate them. The dining room was painted a pale gold and cream, and when I unpacked a Louis chair for the living room that had matching gold striped upholstery and ebony stained wood, suddenly the room took on a personality, but one I didn’t like. Some old, fusty person had taken … Continue reading What Happens When an Explorer from the 1750s Manifests Himself While You Are Decorating Your Upstairs Sitting Room→
By Michael Lachance I have been thinking more and more about art in my life and the special appeal photography has for me, especially black and white images. We are assaulted daily with media and the volume can obscure the potential beauty of a simple, isolated image. Some photographs succeed as record of a special moment in time. My looking at photography is a good means to gain a bit of mindfulness in an otherwise jumbled calendar. I like to quickly look at collections of photographs and bookmark those which arrest my attention. I then … Continue reading Kitten Follows Mother→
By Ross Taylor STEADY WORK Our drummer stopped too soon but we kept on– like walking off a cliff across the air. I played for her and him and others gone, the wasted dancers hopped a little more. I must repeat this till I get it right: at last she feared my nightly transformations. Her tears for me have cooled to silver bullets. And this: the hospital clocked his final minute then old deserted new as per tradition– all the newborns wailed under the lights. Dance without drums, love only rhyme, bury the … Continue reading Part of the Past→
by Patrice Calise When I was a little girl, I wanted to be one of the boys. No shock there: I grew up in a house with four older brothers, our parents, and several male dogs. My brothers got to run bare-chested in the heat of South Florida summers while I was encumbered with a full t-shirt and eventually (horribly) a bra. (I’d tried walking through the house without a t-shirt when I was 11. It didn’t end well). My brothers just never seemed bothered by their bodies because nobody ever seemed to be observing … Continue reading Gorilla My Dreams→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
