When I was about twelve years old, I found John Christopher’s YA Tripods books in the library. In this series, the humans on Earth have reverted to an agricultural, village-based society dominated by aliens who stalk the planet as giant “tripods,” three-legged metal vehicles in which the domineering hierarchy scans the population to make certain there are no outliers plotting to overthrow them. The aliens use technology to place a “cap” hard-wired into people’s heads when they are twelve or thirteen, and there’s a ritual ceremony surrounding it. The cap keeps humans docile and obedient … Continue reading In Which She is Briefly a Curmudgeon by Ann E. Michael→
When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends Each family will have gathered what is durable and light. How far will the little ones walk before they ask to be carried. What else will you set down. When are we going to be there. Even our grief will not put out the fire. There it is, burning, lighter and lighter, singing into a mouthful of air. Chicken By the third time I checked on her, she had no eyes, just two white sockets where they should have been. A pair of glossy beetles, oblong, paddled in … Continue reading When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends and Chicken, 2 poems by Michael Quattrone→
Fifteen years ago, I knew that moving to the Midwest would be a kind of culture shock. I knew it because I googled “Regional Food of Michigan” and the first thing that came up was “cereal.” But I didn’t know then what I know now, that Midwestern Nice was going to be the real shock. I always felt shy growing up on Long Island. Part of that shyness was that I was an outsider from the start. We started our lives as a family in Palo Alto, Calif., where I was born at Stanford University … Continue reading Culture Shock by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner→
When I was very young, I memorized the poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, unaware that I had been drawn into poetry of place. Short-sighted, I read it as a poem about the loss of innocence which mirrored some of my own morphing into an adult. Now I realize the poem does what good poetry of place does; it brings us into imaginative relationship with the land we have separated from. Loss of innocence? Perhaps, but more the inevitability and shifting of perspective that underpins our perceptions of home or homelessness. Many poems of place … Continue reading Thoughts on Place by Sharon Ackerman→
The vermillion sun salts our mouths, warmth brimming with the sapor of brine. I write on my arm the torrid air a salve for wounds pleasure can make known again. Why is it important that we remember the metrics of marking time? All I ever am haunted by the naming of things, the finality of definition of anything being anything more than what is. Fascinated by turning toward, becoming haloed from a moving silhouette— I write nonsense, vague and unspecific defenses, keeping me from being known. Next to me, someone is talking (to me?) of … Continue reading Sure to Glisten by Ashley Taylor→
Between the two American holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seems appropriate to write about one aspect of both: food. Traditionally the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of a successful, or at least adequate, harvest with the hope that such would carry the Pilgrims through the hard winter to come. Occasions for such thoughts, no doubt, are ancient and center around family and tribe sustainability. An official thanksgiving holiday was not celebrated until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared one, a few hundred years after the “first” Thanksgiving in 1621. We collectively count the blessings … Continue reading Beware the Feast by Fred Wilbur→
Mollypops, we called them, stomping with our small shoes, heaving them like baseballs, bursting them green against the barn wall. We were children, seeking to destroy, as children do, leaving the juice-encased seeds to rot, perhaps reseed the pasture’s edge. Now I watch them in the garden. They droop egg-like, ripen toward yellow, draping palmate leaves like mittened hands sheltering blossom and fruit. How frail the flowers perched atop the leaves, a few still blooming purple! Passiflora incarnate, naked as Botticelli’s Chloris in her flimsy veil. Style and stigma, anthers invite golden bee to … Continue reading Passionflowers by Joyce Compton Brown→
Turning sixty last month mandated a driver’s license renewal that replaced my wide-eyed forty-year-old self with a puffy-eyed, wrinkly-necked person unmistakably related to the round-faced woman who gave me life. I stare at my new picture and wince, wondering if the blood flow to my brain will one day be limited. But I also look with pride, remembering the vibrant, funny, empathetic person my mother once was, hopeful I inherited some of her better traits, too. That ninety-year-old now lives with me and asks repeatedly, sometimes three or more times in a five-minute span, “What’s … Continue reading Watching Colors Fade By Kathleen Coleman Thomas→
People will say it was suicide, but you mustn’t believe them. They’ll say I looked normal at first, a tall woman with long black hair in a gray, knee-length skirt. They’ll explain how I disappeared down the spur trail, into the woods, to the patch of dirt that dips into the Potomac River. When the newspapers announce my death, they’ll speculate that I desired to die. They’ll report that I ignored the “Swimming Prohibited” signs. The dog-walkers will confirm that they’d seen me on the C&O Canal path before, that my Golden Retriever … Continue reading Immersed by Caroline Kahlenberg→
I reach for a glass jar of sweet gherkins and notice the same unfamiliar woman is following me down another aisle in the grocery store. I wonder if it is a coincidence. My gut tells me otherwise. The wavy-haired woman is looking down at her phone. Moving toward her, I pretend to search for stone ground mustard. I am now close enough to see she is on social media. Startled I am so near, she stammers, “You, you, you look familiar.” I look at her and know I have never seen her before, unless I … Continue reading I Don’t Miss You When You’re Not With Me by Bridget Verhaaren→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
