I should have turned on the porch light, but the bulb is dead, I said, I had to leave her alone in the bathroom so I could stand outside and watch for the ambulance because the porch light is out, I wasn’t certain the EMTs would find the house, but she’s in the bathroom, on the toilet and can’t stand, while I was teaching a class tonight, she phoned the evening coordinator who stood at the classroom door and softly told me she needed me, but I don’t understand why a firetruck is at the … Continue reading Last Words by Caroline Malone→
By the time I reached my teens, I was taken with the idea of writing a fictionalized autobiography, but as my college roommate, Barry, observed, no one will want to read my autobiography if I have led a dull life. He was right, of course, but I had already considered that problem and thought I had solved it with the novel—if overly precious—notion of setting my autobiographical account in the nineteenth century even though I lived in the twentieth. This would have required historical research to figure out what would be the same and what … Continue reading The Thinly Disguised Autobiography by Miles Fowler→
Sandra Hopkins is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest How did my grandpa, Papa Hop, know that it would be impossible for me not to put my tongue in the space where my first baby tooth had come out? How could he predict that all on its own my untamed tongue would find my soft, raw gum and seek to massage it? I wanted a gold tooth just like his. His teeth gleamed as he spoke. A piece of Timothy hay he was chewing on moved up and down as he … Continue reading Tongues of Fire by Sandra Hopkins→
for Alfred Kern,1924-2009 Search Amazon for his novel, The Width of Waters, and you get No Image Available and No Customer Reviews. Instead, you see suggestions for dry texts on hydro resource management. Yet, as if the red ink is still wet between the lines of my fictions typewritered onto now yellowing pages, his words manifest in my mind’s margins. I wonder if the storyisn’t or can’t be deeper.Press harder. Once, as a curious student, I visited his classic Victorian facing Diamond Park, watched as he released, … Continue reading Mentor by Jeanne Julian→
Once again, we had the opportunity to read a (virtual) stack of flash fiction pieces that have enlarged our worlds—and we are grateful. As usual, we employed the Venn Diagram method of settling on the winners, each listing our own top choices and then selecting from those that overlapped. It’s an interesting way of judging because deeply held favorites may not even ‘medal’. But that pretty much underscores the subjective nature of contests (or, you know, anything.) What speaks to one person might not, another. Which is all to say—that, contests aside, the truly … Continue reading 2024 Flash Fiction Contest by Erika Raskin→
An 800-year-old cathedral is burning to the ground. The world is in horror that things, too, can die, though we thought them immune or immortal. We thought beauty could save, or fondness, or all the photos we took and took. But the spire is collapsing, and the roof. A black skeleton against the metal-bright flames. Nothing can save you or any other thing. The mitochondria in my cells are burning their last. Powerhouse trinkets from my mother and the mothers before her. I’m the end of them. Even if I’d had children, it would have … Continue reading For Notre Dame by Sian M. Jones→
Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you’re considering getting old. We don’t recommend this course of action, of course, because the risks greatly outweigh the advantages. But if you must age, here are a few tips to help you navigate what can be a fun time in your life, if you take the proper precautions. Keep in mind that the main skill required for this period of your life is that of settling; as in settling for things you had never considered you would need to settle for in the first place. … Continue reading Tips For Aging Women by Christine McDowell Tucker→
Before the Ambulance I saw him collapse on the trail that divides the golf course, then climbs and looks over the valley crowded with townhouses for fifty-five and older. If we entered the fallen man’s home we could see the forever stamps in folded sheaths of waxed paper neatly tucked beside reading glasses, an hourglass, and gadgets that calculate distance and day. We’d see the unused weekly planners and the used that annotated the meetings with doctors and accountants and one for a lawyer that was crossed out. As the siren from down the hill … Continue reading Before the Ambulance and Dandelion, 2 poems by Dennis Cummings→
What’s happening to me? Downstairs I can hear my wife Ann with our two-year-old Isabella, their sounds bubbling up from the kitchen. The scrape of spoon on bowl. The cooed urgings: Another bite? Zoom zoom! Izzy’s delighted yawp. But for some reason I can’t go down the stairs. Every time I try, lowering my right foot onto the top step, the padded carpet giving way, I start to lose my balance and heave myself back up, almost knocking the wedding photo of my mom and dad off the wall. I feel groggy like I’ve … Continue reading Downstairs by Gary Duehr→
“Your new life is gonna cost you your old one.” —Margot Berman I forget if it was around the time of a full moon or another supercharged energy portal that I tend to lose track of, but just when I had made the decision to try out this nomadic lifestyle, an intuitive friend posted that message online. It felt kinda ominous. But also reassuring that as giant of a leap as this was, it was also arriving at a fitting time. Sure, I thought, it’ll cost me familiarities and conveniences of DC life. Creature comforts … Continue reading The (Very Uncomfortable) Art of Letting Go: When Movers Lose All Your Furniture by Katie Wilkes→
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