Ocean wind pushes the four of us with such force that we lean onto each other perched side-by-side on a pile of rocks – daughter, mother, daughter and the father standing behind. The mother’s face covered with curls, all of us laughing at the wind, camera barely balanced and ticking time for the shutter to open and close. Straight strip of sand stretching north was barren for miles, but for sandpipers, seagulls and the plovers who paused and ran, paused and ran again. Today, another generation of plovers, their sons and daughters still pause and … Continue reading A Photograph From That Summer on Point Reyes by Martha E. Snell→
Collateral Damage: 48 Stories, the title of Nancy Ludmerer’s debut collection of captivating short stories, invites threat and suspense, but her sterling craft and literary sensibilities upend all expectations. The collateral part is clear, if often subtle; the damage comes from uncommon revelations, each convincing, each a wonderment. I held my breath (and laughed) for the celebrant in the propulsive and detailed single-sentence flash fiction, Bar Mitzvah, when he choked on his piece of celery “stuffed with scallion cream cheese”; delighted in the guileless turnaround in the page-long Tiffy; and admired the imaginative conceit in … Continue reading Review by Denise B. Dailey of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Nancy Ludmerer→
I have a touch of prosopagnosia (that’s Latin for: oh shit), which is an inability to recognize faces. For me it’s always been a transient condition, hitting without warning. Certain situations are predictably hard. Cocktail parties for instance. I can have a very pleasant conversation with somebody scooping hummus onto crudite’ (that’s a nod to New Jersian, Dr. Oz) then step into the bathroom, come back out and re-introduce myself to the same person now standing by the drinks table. It can also happen in less stressful arenas. One time I glanced up at the … Continue reading A Modest Proposal by Erika Raskin→
Kay Rae Chomic is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest Stephanie climbed her porch stairs, nodded at the two pumpkins with carved misshapen noses, mouths, and teeth. One smiled, one frowned. Both held cigars in place by incisors. Inside the house, she hung her purse on the coat tree in the foyer, stripped off her clothes, and dashed to the shower to wash off the day. Judgment day. Wrapped in her robe, a towel coiled around her hair like a turban, she mixed a Manhattan, sat on the sofa next … Continue reading The View by Kay Rae Chomic→
I’m standing here on Heather Street Beside empty buildings that used to be the RCMP’s. A lot now owned by the government, leased To the film industry. A building where they shoot Movies of people acting out their dreams. I’ve seen cops pull up- ‘check locks’, Move props in and out. 11 at night, “private” Security guard tells me need to leave. Release Video footage on demand of me, I was walking By and a man was waiting there in the lot with his trunk Open. I heard two shots fire; actors running From a … Continue reading Heather Street by Jordan Sperling→
I would describe what I witnessed that day as a meeting of the mundane and the spiritual. I was a young man living in Boston, Mass., in the late 1970s, when I saw something that made an indelible impression on me. It was one unexpected gesture made by someone from whom I should have expected it, but I might have been too jaded. Besides, at the time, I was preoccupied by my own disquiet at seeing another’s ill fortune. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, locally known as “the T,” still deploys four color-designated rail lines. … Continue reading An Incident On the Red Line by Miles Fowler→
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 adjectives were pointed the day that barley was cut, reckless, in Groningen: ………. sultry. magnetic.. taut …… .and then you said you would arrive on time, or late to draw me out and push on my groin– and the void in between us became not measured in feet but in eye glances gone awry: looking at the cusp of … Continue reading The Amstel by Isaac Amend→
The first time I saw Bad Dog Ollie, he gave me the stink eye. He was in a large pen with a flock of adorable puppies, who ran and tumbled and played in a group. He stood to the side, staring up at me with his black eyes. “Isn’t he adorable,” the breeder cooed. “Isn’t he the cutest? And he looks so smart.” Smart, perhaps. Wily, for sure, devious and willfully ill-behaved, definitely. A little dog with six-inch legs who could somehow climb onto the kitchen table, pull down my purse and chew up its … Continue reading Treatise on a Bad Dog by Faye Satterly→
To the new family I sent a letter about the house and our memories of living there for forty-five years. I did tell them lots of information about the house that they needed to know. I gave advice about things to do. I was helpful. I did not tell them how heartbreaking it was for us to move our mother to a memory care facility —her new forever home. I did tell them we’d been happy. I did tell them about the bleeding hearts that grew by the side of the house and seeing a … Continue reading The Letter by Cheryl Somers Aubin→
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. Lots of fiddleheads, lots of May apples, and an ant floating in a pool of water in a leaf. A snail slugged its way across the duff as birds and squirrels sang and chittered in the branches above. The dog ran chasing sticks and splashing through the creek bed. I think I may have discovered a spring, but I am not certain: water … Continue reading Morels and Fun, 2 poems by Stuart Gunter→
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