There is a hand dangling from the driver’s window of the car ahead, a sight seen less often on hot days like this, when most folks crank up the A/C and keep hands inside, but this one seems unbothered by the heat. It bounces and pulses, sometimes points fingers or twists the wrists, does a judo chop or makes a fist. I can’t hear the band it dances to, but try to imagine the music from the motion I see, something jazzy, jumpy, full of jive, nothing limp or frumpy about this music or this … Continue reading Hand Dancing in a 45 Speed Zone by Richard Allen Taylor→
A few years ago, a friend of mine was compelled to downsize as she moved from her cottage and asked if I would relieve her of a large dictionary and its slope-topped table. I said I would pick it up and did so in a matter of a few days. I was thankful; she was thankful. It is a Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 1966, with many reprint dates over the years. It measures 9 ½ inches by 12 and is 3 ½ inches thick. Too thick to grasp on the run. Not the OED, but … Continue reading The Weight of Words by Fred Wilbur→
I learned how mean boys could be on the school bus during my first week of third grade. It was the first year my sister, in kindergarten, was riding with me and I beamed as we walked to the bus stop at the end of our street. The leaves were starting to turn red in our small town, and the morning chill was fresh on my cheeks. I took her hand as she climbed up the steep steps of the bus, her pony tail bouncing along with her lunchbox. “Good morning, Mr. Jim,” I smiled. … Continue reading One Small Gift by Anne Merritt→
More than one has said it: that love is of this world only the world of a willow reaching for a river as the river goes its way and of a nuthatch nesting in a beechwood tree as light devolves from day into night The true reckoning of this world is the way we come to know things twice in the wonder first and then the remembering the bitterroot blossom before it fades and everything else we lose but love anyway. A native of Baton Rouge, La., Michael Blanchard now lives in the Cadron Valley … Continue reading The Things of This World by Michael Blanchard→
Lissy is already dressed, her dolls arranged next to the bed in the space that is sometimes a boat, sometimes a park, and often a doctor’s office. The toys are all hues, different nationalities, from newborn to school-age, with sizes that don’t really make sense when placed next to each other. The two Barbies, who were inexpertly gifted to my daughter, live in the closet. Their boo-zooms, career ensembles, and matching footwear are of no interest to the kindergartner. “Hello, little girl!” I say. “Hello, little mother,” she smiles. “Whoa, why does Susan have all … Continue reading Complicity—A True Fiction Of Now by Erika Raskin→
The buffalo are gone And those who saw the Buffalo are gone~ Carl Sandburg I. The sun rose and spread her long fingers of light onto the grasses and great plains of Custer State Park. Over twenty-thousand tourists are herded to parking areas where we line up on both shoulders of the valley to witness twelve-hundred buffalo race through the grasslands, kick up muck, feel their weight pound the earth beneath us. II. When the buffalo come down through the valley, they shuffle like cows going to slaughter. We are told it is too warm … Continue reading At the Buffalo Roundup by Kristin Laurel→
“There’s something you should know,” was how he would put it. He would say this while she was doing something else—years later, in a Solana Beach cottage two blocks from the Pacific, Annie could still remember exactly where she’d been, what she’d been doing, the way one does looking back at a national tragedy. These were not national tragedies but at once less and more, news that struck to the bone, altering her immediate world more than a presidential assassination. What Andrew remembered was how she stopped what she was doing and turned her … Continue reading Grater by Debby Mayer→
“I choose to take photos because I liked the idea of being able to stop time for a moment,” says Rhode Island photographer Kate Salvi. “I live with anxiety and manic depression so being able to stop for a minute and focus on something beautiful that takes me away from my thoughts is very intoxicating.” When she was twenty-two, Salvi was given a Canon camera by her mother who appreciated … Continue reading New Photography by Kate Salvi→
into earth muffled dark with fear that i hold in risen shoulders, sacral plate, pelvis, vertebrae. my earth heart sends a radio signal, a star wink, dragon fly’s glance & wing clicks resonate through my body mass – doubts, societal expectations such as a body can only be whole if white or a vanilla mind must coordinate with skin like matching gloves, hats, shoes & purse ‘50’s style my vertebral discs are collapsing, degenerates, generations crushed from carrying false beliefs squeezed out, cut from the herd, don’t fit transcriptions, images iconically worshiped politicized dirt digging … Continue reading tunneling with my friend mole by Susanne S. Rancourt→
In the pre-dawn morning, thirty-six hours before my daughter’s wedding, she enters my bedroom. Her flashlight beam wakes me. Good heavens. Half awake, I wonder, is Tempe looking for a necklace? In the dark bedroom, she whispers, “Marcos’s mother didn’t make it.” She’s waking me up to tell me the mother of her fiancé died that morning. Marcos’s aunties reached him in the pre-dawn from Toronto General Hospital. His mother’s unexpected death a day and a half before the rehearsal dinner. I can’t believe it. His mother and I planned to do the “mother’s dance” … Continue reading With a Little Help From My Friends by Trudy Hale→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
