Some Trepidation by Fred Wilbur I am scheduled for a tri-annual colonoscopy soon and like most people, I buy into the statistics of cancer prevention, though it is not an event […]

Arson by Matt Dhillon Matt Dhillon is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Poetry Contest Arson Blistering heat, mother of me. A little gasoline makes the […]

The Sink by Eric Odynocki Eric Odynocki is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Poetry Contest The Sink glints like a boneyard, white plates peeking over the rim […]

Appeasement by John Cullen John Cullen is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Poetry Contest Appeasement Three hundred pounds of pasture mix in the […]

Time Traveling by Bill Glose   Driving switchbacks on Shenandoah’s spine, dipping into valleys and screaming up again, we scorch speed warnings from yellow di […]

A Gull and The Black Birch, 2 poems by J. R. Solonche A Gull A gull so far from the river circles the parking lot. Its whiteness is lost in this late fall day’s brightness. Its black edges are lost […]

Between the two American holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seems appropriate to write about one aspect of both: food.

Traditionally the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of a successful, […]

a lot of roadkill lately.
one sign of summer’s
approach. dead foxes—
dead birds especially.
and once, on the main road
driving toward blessington,
an otter—an almost
intact thing, a torso
as thick […]

The sky streams by overhead, a blue tapestry
dappled with puffs of white, each cloud haloed

by the sun’s mild gold. The day is at its half-
way point. Soon, the sky will lose its hold on gold,

the b […]

the fancy radio my wife gifted
into my simple pickup
has finally died

despite all manner of punching and twirling,
little instrument won’t rouse,
nor even static startle, and
the bright digital time s […]

I gave up early:
and went to a houseboat
to mourn:

both named a beer
and splashed next
to woes about your love
in a bunk of redwood
done messy by stinkbugs.

your ad […]

Morels

………………….For Tom Proutt

In my latest unsuccessful hunt for the unicorn
of the woods, I found a two-point buck skull,
a square of soapstone, a 1952 Mennen bottle,
and a foxhole. […]

Sending simultaneous submissions is a fact of a poet’s life whether you practice the strategy or not. How such a maneuver began may be one of those mysteries of history, but it is acceptable to most literary v […]

….1. France. Poppies blooming blood.

Hedged by four sheets strung on wire, my grandparents
spent their wedding night, December 1917:
a New York married-barracks, moans muffled
the night before the men […]

“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster . . .” (Elizabeth Bishop)

Every once in a while I open
one of too-many, tiny

boxes, and there you are,
bright stab of memory: My bra […]

“An artist is said to be original exactly when he takes up the challenge of tradition and makes us see something more than we already knew.” Demetri Porphyrios. Classical Architecture.

I am a fund […]

It’s wrong to feel lucky
when a poplar blooms.
…………Branches spit out slender pinks below low clouds.

In fields here, we find arrowheads.
Ancient whispers on the ridge. One death begs […]

Vigil
Outside the nurses’ station,
third floor east, twilight spreads
its white canopy over
the busy avenue of bright buildings.
Down the hall, an orderly lofts a pale
sheet over a vacant bed.
In the next […]

As a very small child I learned language just like all small children. Only in my case there were some mysterious words that took me years to sort out their true meaning. There were words like Amtrak, lugao, Santo […]