2023 Poetry Contest Winners by Fred Wilbur It is our pleasure to announce the Winners and Honorable Mentions of the annual Streetlight Magazine Poetry Contest. How did we arrive at our […]

Elegy for a Soldier by Will Hemmer In the pulsing heat, in the black cathedral of war, the amber-tinted silver of infra-red illuminates a man. Nimble in the moment between the […]

Writers' Joy by Fred Wilbur Writers or bloggers who write about writing often express the difficulties of practicing the craft in romantic terms of justification. Maybe not […]

Laundry by Charlie Brice Fat Auntie Ursal with her coffee-breath, baggy pink house dress, and worried rosary beads would haul a basket of linen to the backyard, pick […]

God by Mel Kenne God must be, I dare now to say, like a cat, with His / Her / Its impertinence and delays in ordering our lives, loves and ways of being […]

grown girl: she thinks of the dead by Liz Femi it surely is the same wrinkled sky from years ago when i lived in dense forest towns when cold winds chafed Iroko bark like prayers chafe […]

Belleville Reformed Church by Josh Humphrey And if you were that old collection of smudged walls and dusty glass, you would be embarrassed to be caught by                        the mo […]

Beech Tattoos by Ned Kraft Father Fagus Grandifolia, silver grey with muscled shoulders fingers traced across the soil like a hawk’s nest suturing the slope. Beech t […]

Air is Wind is Song by Fred Wilbur As a child, when did you first become aware of air? It was probably as its manifestation in the mysterious force of wind. Indeed, we all have […]

Desire by Molly McKaughan I sit at the bar at Café Un, Deux, Trois on West 43rd and cross my legs and swivel toward the room glass of wine in hand nylons […]

Reaching Out by Fred Wilbur Among rural Piedmont foothills, coves of the gentle Blue Ridge Mountains, is where I live. There is no incorporated town in the county; the […]

Dismantling Bethlehem by Sam Barbee After-Xmas industry. In neighborhoods, crisp cedars and spruce pines hyphenate curbs. A pasture fronts the orphanage, tempers grid of brick […]

Rembrandt Etchings by Frederick Pollack     From however far away, detail. The lovers, almost fully clothed, amid bushes, her round blonde face delighted, hopeful. The r […]

Monosyllabic by J. R. Solonche The best ones are the small ones, those you need to hold in your hand two or three at a time, those you need to feel for size, and shape, and […]

Punding by Eric Forsbergh It’s working all of us, and all the time. Not just as obvious obsessions with diagnostic names, the car-horn ones you notice corralling s […]

Handout by Michael T. Young A day of forgetting has its price, but a price that can’t be reckoned, because the receipt itself was shoved into a pocket, soaked in the l […]

Atheist and Not Now, Maybe Not Ever, 2 poems by Claire Rubin Scott Atheist At seven I stopped believing in Santa after Mary Lou whispered to me betrayed by adults lured into an unreal world I stopped believing […]

and yet the moon by Nimisha Mondal your father is dying on the other side of the world and yet, the moon shines into our bedroom my mother has broken her ankle and can’t walk […]

Writing History's Happenstance by Fred Wilbur During my older sister’s annual visit last fall, three shoe boxes came into the house with her luggage. After the usual greetings and settling i […]

The Owl by Deborrah Corr From the branch above, half concealed in new oak leaves, silent, the barred owl watches with giant eyes, round as the pool at my feet. Its […]