After-Xmas industry. In neighborhoods, crisp cedars and spruce pines hyphenate curbs. A pasture fronts the orphanage, tempers grid of brick dorms where crews toil with life-size figurines of an ornamental nativity. An ensemble donated by Sears & Roebuck in the 70’s like gold tensile or corporate myrrh – fully amortized / no retail benefit at the mall. Bedded horizontal on a trailer, the plaster statues murmur in route to out-of-season storage: a devalued host of sojourners relegated to an outbuilding. Not a stable, not a fable, but dry font until next November’s advent – reverent … Continue reading Dismantling Bethlehem by Sam Barbee→
Linda Berkery is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest Ten years ago, I was the one with memory loss. I was repeating questions in a loop. What day is it? Oh, Sunday. What did I do today? My husband called an ambulance and I was wheeled to the MRI tunnel. Since there was no sign of stroke, and my memory returned, I soon had a diagnosis, Transient Global Amnesia, and a warning from the neurologist. “You can’t get those memories back, no matter how much you try, so don’t try.” The frightening but … Continue reading Love in Life’s Tunnels by Linda Styles Berkery→
This is me in 1975, with one of my best friends: my grandparents’ dog Sandy. This kid became tough as fuck, even though she was scared to death for most of her young life. This kid wore hand-me-downs, even though she was an only child. This kid never liked Yoo-Hoos. This kid could write a New York Times bestseller and a Netflix series about her childhood, if she’d only stop scrolling on her phone. This kid lived in apartments until she was ten years old. This kid still has math anxiety from Catholic school and … Continue reading This Kid by Kathleen McKitty Harris→
From however far away, detail. The lovers, almost fully clothed, amid bushes, her round blonde face delighted, hopeful. The returned Prodigal, kneeling, embraced, exhausted – such precision of apology and joy – but seen by whom in the middle distance, that fascinating distance you don’t notice? A bystander, a passerby who stops to take the scene in wholly. As in Christ Presented to the People so they may choose between the thief and him: steps, platform, doorway, every window full, spear-carriers, hangers-on, all known; and Christ, thorned head down, looking tired, as one … Continue reading Rembrandt Etchings by Frederick Pollack→
This year’s Art Search Contest drew from a pool of talented artists far and wide. Their works included handsome photographs and landscapes to mixed mediums, fine drawings and surreal collages. The choice of winners took some back and forth between us. Our final two selections were based primarily on the artist’s skill and facility with their materials, and principally, their personal vision regarding their subject. For First Place, we have chosen the work of Emma Knight of Richmond, Va. Emma Knight’s unique and playful landscape scenes provide a lush view into an imaginary … Continue reading Winners of 2023 Art Search Contest→
The best ones are the small ones, those you need to hold in your hand two or three at a time, those you need to feel for size, and shape, and heft, the blunt, the sharp, the smooth, the rough, the square, the round, the firm, the soft, the ones like rocks, like bricks or stones in streams, the ones like clods of soil or clumps of clay, the ones you pile to build the whole world with, and then the ones you hurl to bring it down. Nominated for the National Book Award and … Continue reading Monosyllabic by J. R. Solonche→
My dad’s family bible and watch finally arrived in the mail to me nearly twenty years after his death. How it happened is a circuitous story, worthy of a southern novel. Of note, I did in the getting, offer to pay my nephew a sum of money to steal the bible off my sister’s coffee table. It didn’t come to that but hopefully gave my nephew and niece a tale to tell. Novelist Pat Conroy once contended there are no crimes in families beyond forgiveness. Well, that rings true. The presence of these items in … Continue reading Southbound by Sharon Ackerman→
It’s working all of us, and all the time. Not just as obvious obsessions with diagnostic names, the car-horn ones you notice corralling someone else as you avert your eyes. Don’t be coy. Punding hums to you and me. Collect. Arrange. My mother took up figurines, blaming the Depression for her want. Myself, I go by color, size, or function for my stuff. The superego interrupts: “In this implicit way, are you not sorting people with a glance?” Eric Forsbergh’s poetry has appeared in Streetlight, Artemis, JAMA, The Northern Virginia Review, The Journal of Neurology, … Continue reading Punding by Eric Forsbergh→
The instant we walk into the next room, which is all photographs—black-and-white rocks casting shadows in a desert, dirty-faced Depression kids and haggard mothers; borrrrring—Van seizes my arm. “Oh. My. God.” She doesn’t have to say anything else; she doesn’t even have to point. The high, silly voice springs from my mouth to her ear without conscious intervention. “Ohh, the Met? Awesome! Let me put on my club shoes!” Van growls through gritted teeth: “Oh—God—my—fucking—feet—hurt—but—I’m—trying—to—hide—it!” “He doesn’t even give a shit, man. Great boyfriend.” “I don’t even think he’s her boyfriend.” I squint, tilt … Continue reading Hot Guy From Photography Class by Alice Archer→
My dog sits right next to me. He’s a fourteen-almost-fifteen year old soft-coated wheaton terrier. He’s recovering from another bout of pneumonia, only two months since the last. Insanely cozy and sweet, mellow and always ready for a nap, he’s night-and-day different from his puppy days, when my husband and I thought we’d made a mistake for the entire first year of his life. When Animal (named because of his similarity to the drum-rocking muppet) was a puppy he was batshit insane. He’s always been so lovable, and so loved, but those first years he … Continue reading Afterglow by Emily Littlewood→
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