Masterpieces are hard,
manifestos, conversation
pieces are easy. Here’s
a woman who does sculptures
of babies popping out of
toasters, the whole thing
drenched in a combination
of blue and yellow p […]

This is the place that emptied
my father, sucking him
through the tunnel of its straw.
Four days into a farewell
visit, I’ve overdosed
on sunlight, rousing the insomniac within.
The grass is g […]

Stories by Sharon Ackerman I Like the Story Of the watch my father gave my mother how it stopped whenever they fought, except that is not the full story, the whole one. In […]

Journey by Billie Hinton …………Perhaps when the boy built the elaborate scaffolding between sand trays in his first therapy session he was building bridges from me to […]

Meeting Myself on My Morning Walk

…..a long look up
into branches I’ll see him,
………………his blond hair
in a butch I wore more
than fifty years ago.

………..Where wind currents swell
every […]

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.–Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” 1861

Solvitur Ambulando. Since Wordsworth logged his 175,00 […]

Luisa M. Giulianetti is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

The Pepper Jar
…………………………..for Dad
Guided by the moon, you germinate
seeds. Transplanting infant […]

Victoria Korth is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Treatment Team
Found lying in a parking lot
on Union Street, close to the shelter

where she’d been in flight
from a husband w […]

Gina Malone is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest

Why My Father Cannot Lay a Stone Wall
Nearly eighty now he drags out the soft
middles of words when he plunders his past,
sweeping […]

As the East’s Songbird Epidemic Fades, the Cause Remains Unknown
………………….—Audubon Magazine, September, 2021

Fifty thousand starlings swoop
above the marshes, wings drum in unis […]

Shadows

His light bulb dims,
and it’s dark enough
for shadows revealed.
A surprise every time.

Strangers rush from nothing
to a glittering blue pool.

Ships resemble chess pieces
from the mist of a b […]

He looked small, curled up on her couch
this handsome boy/man
not looking at her
picking his fingernails
jiggling his foot
a whisper of a beard on his face
he was silent
she waited
he cleared his […]

Bukowski talked about it, the one he threw
through the window each drunken night
and it still played, a radio indestructible
with songs that couldn’t help but bead
against my forehead. I think of Jo […]

The garden bridge, a subtle arc
that gathers to its bend
the mossy stones of either bank,
and to the water lends

a stagnant symmetry: the dark
tunnel above, the sky
afloat below. A tranquil […]

Swimming Again to Meet You,
along some enclosed lane where I pass you
swimming in the other direction.

Decades, I swam into changing light
that guided me to temporary rest—

So I begin again—

the lon […]

My summer reading list (and Spring) centers around the writings of Thomas Merton. After sifting through his prose and poetry I think the most amazing thing about him is how many people lay claim to him and find a […]

Solvitur Ambulando—a Latin phrase meaning “it is solved by walking”—is credited to the philosopher Diogenes in the fourth century BCE. He uttered this phrase when presented with a difficult metaphysical questio […]