Of course it’s only a coincidence that Armistice Day, the conclusion of World War I, falls (or used to) in November, that month which begins with All Hallows Eve and proceeds briskly to the Day of the Dead. It j […]

Chicago is in my blood, even though today I consider myself a Californian. My parents immigrated to the Windy City in the late 1950s; my younger brother, my three older sisters and I were all born on the […]

In addition to being the second Monday in October—a month with, yikes, five Mondays in 2017—October 9 this year (and every so often) commemorates Columbus Day. Are you planning to celebrate? Or use the time off […]

I’m seven years old, and streams of people lean on the walls of the viewing room, standing in line for their turn to see my father in his coffin. I’m so close that the slippery gloss of the lacquered wood sli […]

I am floating in near total silence in the women’s bathhouse at the Jefferson Pools, a natural mineral springs in Bath County, Virginia. Surrounded by six other women, some nude, others in bathing suits, t […]

I didn’t know exactly where we were going as my brother took me for a ride in the countryside of my home county on a late February Saturday. He drove down a narrow paved road and stopped near an overgrowth of t […]

Rich H. Kenney, Jr. is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2017 Essay/Memoir contest.

In the summer of 1960, my father got high and I held the ladder. “All you have to do,” he told me, “is […]

Anne Carson is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2017 Essay/Memoir contest.

It had just snowed a heavy snow, and my mother picked us up early from school. The roads were not that scary or […]

Alex Joyner is the 1st place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2017 Essay/Memoir contest.

Robert E. flippin’ Lee’s church pew. Is there any more compromised bench in all of Christendom? It occupies some mid […]

She was a bully, a backer, a stinker, a treasure. She was a finder of fault and forte, folly and facility. She was the picture of rigor and push and impeccability, her visage stern and stately and a dead-ringer […]

I was standing in the stacks of the Sutro Library in San Francisco, following a lead on a case I was working. I was not a private detective, but I had aspirations to be one, and my sister-in-law wanted me to find […]

I understood the world around me on Promise Road. I felt at home on the edge of the rolling valley, looking out at the distant mountain range. I learned to fight creeping Charlie, pigweed and cheat grass with […]

The city’s Central district is different in the early morning, just after sunlight usually appears: near empty streets, no black skirt suits, few voices. Today, damp bundles just delivered to the ne […]

They are called Quakers because the spirit, which is in all beings, begins to move and demands a voice. They quake where they sit, on their plain wooden benches, until that which is in their hearts is spoken […]

In his slightly madcap, secretly serious, mystery novel, I Shot the Buddha, Colin Cotterill, on the very first page, describes three types of “cinematic plot devices” that his protagonists find annoying: coi […]

When I was younger I prayed that if I had to get sick, I’d get a movie star illness—one with a color, ribbon, and celebrity spokespersons. It’s not that I wanted to be ill, but in my family broke-down-body lore […]

Today, as I write this, December 11, 2016, is National Noodle Ring Day. What, again? you say. So soon? But that’s how the holy days are, aren’t they, always upon us, or so it seems. I’m reminded of a won […]

Sweet Tarts

Tía Mimí was lumpy. My tía Esther was fat. My father’s two sisters never married.

“You’ll grow up to be old maids like your aunts,” mami sang to Patricia and me.

“Julita doesn’t appr […]

I wrote to Paul, but a response was not received. The second time I enclosed adequate British postage, thinking the postage might my enhance chances. It wasn’t as though I was asking for a grant or a personal v […]

Monday, October 10, is (or was, depending when you’re reading this) Columbus Day—in case you were wondering why there was no mail. Columbus Day, recently voted National Holiday Mostly Likely to be Abandoned i […]