This moment demands my attention. Tiny turtles, vulnerable as polar bears, bubble up from their sandy womb, struggle towards light borrowed from the moon, dropped onto the sea. I spend so much time surrounded by concrete, cars, and catastrophe that birth in the wild startles, like the moment fine wine trips over the tongue and without instruction, awakens the palette. Human tragedy tramples parts of the world I can’t find on a map and places I can drive to—just down the road where home-grown shooters kill en masse, shielded by the 2nd Amendment. Just look … Continue reading One Moment Along the Food Chain by Marsha Owens→
When have you been convinced to change your mind? How did it happen? By negotiation? By beauty? By lament? By shock or threat? By what? The question and poem prompt by the Irish poet Padraig O Tuama from Poetry Unbound intrigued me. But nothing came to mind. Certainly not any dramatic on-the-road-to-Damascus, ‘see the light,’ kind of thinking. Until last night. But first let me set the stage. Nov. 6 I was in Memphis with my daughter to attend my godson’s wedding and visit old friends. Outside the Peabody Hotel the sky was overcast, low … Continue reading On the Edge by Trudy Hale→
They were back at the fountain as she had promised, Nicky’s sweet round belly against the marble ledge as he tried to reach for the penniesnickelsdimes tossed into that over-chlorinated water by puppy-love teens and small children who begged, like Nicky, for change, which she refused to give when he’d come whining five minutes ago, three minutes, two, one. She wasn’t about to raise the kind of person who just went around throwing coins into any pond or stream he saw, necessitating the signs at their zoo and the park with easy hikes. “Please do … Continue reading Fountains by Amy Foster Myer→
Streetlight Voices: Short Fiction & Memoir · Down the Shore by John Adinolfi Podcast: “Down the Shore” is about the rhythm of the sea and a marriage. A fictional story performed by Jennifer Sims. Read the story online: “Down the Shore” by John Adinolfi Jennifer Sims is an actor and voice over artist who has voiced hundreds of projects across all genres. After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts she wandered into a career in advertising. She worked as an ad agency producer for ten years before she found her way back to her … Continue reading Down the Shore by John Adinolfi→
Philip Newman Lawton has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest My sister Margaret is dead. Her body has gone to cinders, her pain, blown away like smoke. I want to remember her as a child, go back far enough to trace the whole arc of her existence, make sense of it, figure out why she lived and died the way she did, but we grew up in a dysfunctional family, an alcoholic father, a hand-wringing mother, and I was prone to lose myself in books and daydreams. My memories are in … Continue reading Deus Absconditus by Philip Newman Lawton→
When you add cream to your coffee there is a moment of storm beneath the surface, the possibility of a sinner planting a kiss on the gates of heaven, a string of cloud floating in the old well before the clanging and swirling spoon drains all of our hopes into the great brown ditch. And yet this kind of hope can only live in a moment. The young communist’s dream before Stalin’s moustache crawls into his trousers, mercilessly scratching his thighs; the trust of the promising acolyte before the moat-like grimace of a priest separates … Continue reading Cafe con Leche by Benjamin Schmitt→
My photography employs minimalist classical shooting techniques which offer a throwback alternative to computer driven modern photography. This approach carries the label Forensic Foraging in a nod to the plodding techniques of early crime scene pictorial work. Forensic Foraging is not in direct competition with any other shooting approach. It is only a carefully considered recognition that the basic techniques which made photography great in the first place can still have considerable relevance in today’s digital world. I seek to lift everyday subjects up into pleasing eye candy by recording them in a visual … Continue reading William Crawford’s New Photography→
Tucked in her shell of gutsy metal, an errant art teacher spun my car into a snow bank. We shook after the collision, the grab handle, Jesus, pried loose, sun visor dangling like a hangnail from the inside roof. The glovebox archives our road lives, talismen from preschool classes, cassette tapes and their magnetic cellophanes spooling loose, expired disability placards lodged behind the tissue packets. The passenger side door was crinkled, discarded- candy-wrapper-style, and the back of my head felt like mayhem and grind. She didn’t see me turning right, despite my right of way, … Continue reading First Car Accident by Alisha Goldblatt→
I LOVE shoes. I have loved shoes for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until I became an adult that I had the disposable income to explore what that really meant. Growing up as the daughter of a pastor at a small midwestern church, there wasn’t a lot of money for anything that wasn’t a necessity. Expensive, sparkly shoes did not fit the criteria. I’ll be honest, my favorite shoes these days are my Converse . . . solid, comfortable, and easy to wear. My six-year-old daughter shares my love for them, … Continue reading Shoe Story by J. Tara Scott→
The lilacs hid the remains of a porch it used to screen. The hints of joints and steps leading up and between. Stone remnants of a foundation, a house that used to be stolid and presentable to the world. Flush with flowers, the branches bending low, bowing under their weight, I waited, too, shifting my own meager childish weight, from one foot to the other, sifting through those parts of me solid and true, walled in by my imagination, as white-washed walls rose back into view. The air heavy with its perfume. My head … Continue reading Jack Gilbert Keeps Lilacs Alive in his Head by Deborah Doolittle→
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