Is it the nature of desire or the desire of nature to reveal how little we have evolved. Is it the few words of a person or a person of few words who commands our attention. Is it the history of violence or the violence of history that stirs our passion. Is it the loss of sadness or the sadness of loss that wakes the suddenness of joy. Is it the surprise of a gift or the gift of surprise that creates delight. Is it the loneness of a flower or the flower of aloneness … Continue reading What Claims Us by Diana Pinckney→
I had heard when you get older you revert to a lot of your tastes and activities when young, but I disregarded it, until I started buying old Joni Mitchell and Buffalo Springfield albums, and listening to the Beach Boys and James Taylor in the car. Now I am riveted to a 230-acre ranch in the high coastal mountains of British Columbia, with wild horses and meadows bordered by beautiful woods full of aspens and birch, and even taller, snow-covered mountains in the distance. A few days ago, one of the spunkiest, fiercest of the … Continue reading The Little Colt by Laura Marello→
“I didn’t initially like abstract art,” admits artist Kathleen Markowitz, her vibrant paintings offering bursts of primary colors, suffused surfaces that suggest rather than depict nature and its mysterious forces. She remembers her early exposure to art and how, over time, her taste would evolve. “My aunt was a fine arts painter in New York City. As a young girl we spent much time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Velazquez was our favorite artist. One day we stumbled on a contemporary artists exhibit. I saw my first Pollock. It emotionally took me somewhere fresh … Continue reading The Art of Kathleen Markowitz→
I’ve held season tickets on the fifty-yard line of health care for a long time, watching in alternating awe and horror at how medical interventions are provided. In the gratitude/wonder department, eleven years ago this month our daughter received a new set of lungs from an enduring-giver of life, the organs transplanted by a team of medical magicians. Nothing detracts from that. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen some things along the way. I’ve written a couple newspaper pieces (and, um, a novel) about all sorts of institutional problems in the health care … Continue reading Unsolicited Advice by Erika Raskin→
It’s not hard to sneak into the Manhattan Exclusion zone if you know what you’re doing. The Coast Guard mostly looks for the guys who don’t know what they’re doing—the ones who rush past Spuyten Duyvil with some loud-as-shit electric motor alerting everyone still living in Riverdale of their presence. It’s good when these guys get caught. They love racing down the flooded streets of Manhattan, usually drunk, disrupting the wild, but still fragile ecosystem bubbling up from below the waves. If you know what you’re doing, you know to launch your boat from … Continue reading The Last Man in Manhattan by Daniel Goulden→
a lot of roadkill lately. one sign of summer’s approach. dead foxes— dead birds especially. and once, on the main road driving toward blessington, an otter—an almost intact thing, a torso as thick as cracked leadpipe, lying down on the lines which bisected the lanes, and everyone swerving about it. april is indeed a morbid month, and it’s dishonest— sun striking the tarmac like water and drawing things in. daffodils rise, draping forward fat flowers with curl in the neck of a landed and interested vulture. folding its wings at the verges of roadside. strutting, … Continue reading A morbid month by D. S. Maolalai→
The sky streams by overhead, a blue tapestry dappled with puffs of white, each cloud haloed by the sun’s mild gold. The day is at its half- way point. Soon, the sky will lose its hold on gold, the blue spruce will sigh, the verdure of their green growing imperceptible as night unveils its black cloak But, for the moment, the sun’s orange rays still shower down; the moon’s silver sliver is an afterthought for the firmament. I sit in front of my computer to write, the white screen staring back at me. This is … Continue reading The Shades of My Life by Alexander Lazarus Wolff→
At recess, I was talking to a friend on the schoolyard, when a kid came up to us and said that President Kennedy had been shot. He did not say he had died. He just said he had been shot. I turned to my friend, and we exchanged uncertain looks. There was something smart-alecky about this kid, and I accused him of trying to put one over on us. I was twelve years (plus two months) old that November 1963, and I had read a book about the Secret Service, so I knew that the … Continue reading A Death Remembered by Miles Fowler→
……………………………………………………………Inspired by, “What’s Broken,” ………………………………………………………………………………….Dorianne Laux The little boy who only wanted to be rocked on his mother’s lap grows to desire nothing more than to hop in his baby blue Mercury Comet and drive far away from her. The lovers who spent hours in embrace but grew to despise the thought of each other. The scale learned to precision eventually abandoned to atonal schemes and dissonance. The cranky white-haired genius who wrote that only two roads diverged in the wood when there were hundreds of roads, some with potholes, some never completed, some washed … Continue reading What’s Not Broken by Charles Brice→
My flight is booked. I’ll be with you at the hospital, and I’ll stay for your recovery when your kids go back to work. It’s been just a few days—plenty of time for the doctors to figure things out. We’ve been talking on screens for too long; I can’t wait to hug you! And then our brother is on the phone, a strange urgency in his voice. “She wants to see you; she needs to see you.” “You told her I’m coming? I’ll be there in forty-eight hours. I’m on my way!” “She wants to … Continue reading For Ali by Elizabeth Bird→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
