Antonyms for “Affluence”
It is a myth that mice
are impossible to eat.

I see my tuxedo
on another man,

a groom or musician.
It is a myth

that the bride will be thinking
about Queen Vic […]

Sara Biel has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

I Want to Give Him a Chance
Her voice is thin, scrapes and rolls, a dry leaf across the sidewalk.
My fingers grip the phone, […]

Nate Jacob has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Mourning Doves
Looking back, the choice seems obvious.
A man is given the chance in life
to select from a pantheon of […]

Elizabeth Nowak has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Dear Mi-Kwon

Before the whole world went mad,
you wrote to ask about my life
in beautiful America. I could not then […]

Zeina Azzam has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Forgive Me
For lying to the teacher in the school yard
Talking ill of my friend behind her back

For making an excuse to […]

Victoria Korth has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Mr. Abraham
You would unstick huge floor-to-ceiling windows
with a metal-clawed broom handle,
soak the floor where […]

I’m not squeamish about getting my hands dirty, knees soiled, but I never thought I’d be writing about garden club ladies.

The county Garden Club (founded 1935) recently donated their records to the loc […]

William Prindle has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Apologizing to Ferlinghetti

You never took
                      the deal
the hand
            Am […]

What man would not look back
when claiming a celestial voice
commanded him to go away from
pleasures of wine, games of chance,
lust, secular music, dance, art, poetry?
The men who deny life’s g […]

feels this way.
Familiar like the abstract
place you grab for
when you’re curled in despair
on your own kitchen floor
begging to go home,
not knowing where you mean.
No matter whose hair and b […]

I have always thought that John Donne’s metaphor of the drawing compass in “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” one of the most ingenious in English poetry. Not simply about two lovers parting, it descr […]

In school we learn to lie down
in the face of Evil from the skies.
“Take cover,” the first commandment
during air-raid drills as we duck
under our desks, then “All clear.”
No one dares to say t […]

Hi, this is my poem.
Hi, this is my poverty.
What’s that?
My poverty.
The poem and my poverty shake hands.
Everyone ignores my trauma.
I go over to my trauma,
start talking to it.
It tells m […]

It was a shower and gone
quickly. The sky was
only gray a short time.
It reminded me of a gray
fox that I spotted in the
city when I went to buy
two pizza slices, the
unseen people that […]

I heard him say it
dozens of times,
but the first time I said it
I laughed out loud.
Dad never had
two extra nickels to rub together—
my parents the king and queen of getting by—
and, get by the […]

Speeding between the endless fields of corn and beans
70 . . . 75 . . . “This old junker might make it to 80” . . .
Some girl who knows the meaning of, uh, ‘Hey hit the highway!’
I sang it, shouting it, sho […]

Listening to Buckthorn
“Although Wordsworth is [in the opening of
The Prelude] describing the activity of composing aloud, of
walking and talking, what the poetry reaches into is the activity of l […]

The Engineer
Boredom ricochets off the hard edge
of a freight train
carrying ethanol,
carrying the wanton thoughts of a man
gone too long without intimacy.
A secure living is a railroad job,
so you don’t u […]

“Social distancing during Covid means no hugs.”
—NBC News

It was neither part of a protest
nor a statement to the world.
I simply put my arms around
a tall oak and stood in embrace,
our bodies jux […]

Submissions for the annual Streetlight Magazine Poetry Award are open and I want to encourage participation from everyone, those new to our magazine as well as regular readers. The closing date for this […]