We walked down this dusty canyon, where the rains have worn gashes in the gray banks like the creases that run from your cheek bones to your jaw line, Dad. Once you rowed us on a lake, squinting in reflected light, the muscles of your chest and arms fluid, your laughter again like cold water in my face. Then, only a boy, I wanted arms like yours. I even wanted a crease in my cheek. But when I leaned towards you, you shouted, “Sit down! What are you trying to do?” and I sat hunched … Continue reading Trails by Will Hemmer→
Avery Roche is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest Pain. This is a word I am intimately familiar with. In fact, it is at the heart of my whole testimony. Everyone has their own unique relationship with pain. Their own horror stories. Their own way of surviving it. Some have been tossed deep into its depth. Some have been cut brushing along its sharp edges. Some have only gotten close by peering through a window into someone else’s suffering. Before, I might have claimed to understand pain. I might have said … Continue reading Stop Shivering by Avery Roche→
Jonathon Chibuike Uka is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Poetry Contest My Sister’s Breakfast The things my sister eats for breakfast, eat me up when I think about them; five out of seven days in a week, she swallows a whole bottle of her reflection, ziggy-zagging shadows on the surface of the water, or in the sun, cast by the wind, which she drops beside her table, while her other hand picks up a granola of air. A large tray of selfies, mammoth lip-licking, and the bust of eyelashes at everyone are often … Continue reading My Sister’s Breakfast by Jonathon Chibuike Ukah→
Olivia Lee Stogner is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Poetry Contest Where Horses Grow Tired of Running, Hadeel’s Story Today I went to fill up drinking water. My children are doing well.here. They are children who do not know what is going on around them.Dalia is only one month old. I walked a kilometer to reach the water place. It is not your fault. We are believers. We cannot change reality. This is beyond our capabilities.W We cannot say no to America, Europe, or Israel. There are superpowers and we have been oppressed– … Continue reading The Land Where Horses Grow Tired of Running, Hadeel’s Story by Olivia Lee Stogner→
The night was so quiet I could almost hear the stars, that place laden with pines. Your eyes hard to read across the air between us, air you swallowed whole with I’m sorry, I need more room. But I believe in gestures, in the plate of mandarinas served at dawn, when you knew I needed feeding. Linda Laino is a visual artist and writer who has been making art in one form or another for over forty-five years.She received two years of fellowship awards from the Virginia Museum in pursuit of an MFA from Virginia … Continue reading Mandarinas by Linda Laino→
Frankly, readers, Sharon and I were flabbergasted and at the same time gratified that Streetlight Magazine received one-hundred and nine entries to this year’s Poetry Contest. Talk about (early) summer reading! The average number of entries for the last four years (2020-2023) is sixty-one. I wonder why there were about three-quarters more poems this year than this average: we have added to the prize pot, have changed the time of year to open the submissions window, and we are beyond the angst of the pandemic panic. And maybe our reputation and readership are expanding. At … Continue reading In The River of Poetry: Contest Winners→
I have discarded the gods like leftover tuna sandwiches stacks of them stuffed in the recycling including Odin, Shiva, Baal, Sango and Amaterasu bitter ends of unanswered prayers to pastel angels, scraps of saints and multi-armed goddesses all bling and blang no way to bargain with refractory gods no way to seduce them with hymns and chants dharanis and tallits and offerings of ghee hours spent on arthritic knees under overrated stars muttering useless nostrums my list of needs multiplying like dandelions in my lamentable lawn my granddaughter dances past her sequined skirt all rinsed … Continue reading Where to Begin Again by Claire Scott→
Today we drive north for an hour to find the snow geese migration. The geese are in the area for six months, so it shouldn’t be hard. Migration, as in come to roost. The barista in our favorite French coffee shop says, when we tell her where we are headed, “Hmm, I don’t think I’ve heard of that,” even though we know she grew up in the area and we just recently arrived and still know about it. Steaming our milk, she adds, “I once saw a field of swans, maybe that was them.” The … Continue reading The Shooter by Martha Clarkson→
This mother and son have more than most in common; Leah Oates and son Maximilien St-Jacques share a passion for photography.Oates’s grandfather was an amateur photographer who passed on his interest to her. When she began art school she was a painter and printmaker, but says she always referenced photography in both and eventually realized she was a photographer. She studied at Mass Art, Rhode Island School of Design and at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oates also studied in Rome on a year abroad program at RISD and at … Continue reading The Photography of Leah Oates and Max St-Jacques→
I have a fondness for our imperfect union that started with a swindle – too much money for land and a set of plans that had hung over the place like a wrecking ball. I pieced together a story of miners and Mi-Wuks all faded from a view marked now by boarded stamp mills and raised wooden walkways in the shadow of the hillside cemetery. There were no treasures to be found – no spotted bats, burrowing owls, western myotis, Pacific fisher, Foothill yellow-legged frog, or even San Joaquin fox. No Mi-Wuk shards, no watershed … Continue reading Goodbye to Love Atop Old Priest Grade by Mary Pacifico Curtis→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
