feels this way. Familiar like the abstract place you grab for when you’re curled in despair on your own kitchen floor begging to go home, not knowing where you mean. No matter whose hair and breath lend the other pillowcase its scent, which farm grew this squash so delicately sliced, whose face you lean toward, lips to their ear, cupping a joke. No matter which gone person you scan the crowd for year after year. Whitney Hudak is a CNM and poet living in Newport, R.I. Her work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal and … Continue reading Each Year by Whitney Hudak→
I have always thought that John Donne’s metaphor of the drawing compass in “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” one of the most ingenious in English poetry. Not simply about two lovers parting, it describes a coming together through love. Another metaphor I greatly admire (along with everyone else) is the choice depicted in “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. These two ideas in juxtaposition seem to conjure the structure of ‘theme and variation’ so elemental to art: the certainty of the circle with the uncertainty of lines pointing in different directions. Not exactly opposites, perhaps, but … Continue reading Simple Instruments by Fred Wilbur→
He looked small, curled up on her couch this handsome boy/man not looking at her picking his fingernails jiggling his foot a whisper of a beard on his face he was silent she waited he cleared his throat, said he had the same nightmare every night dreams of carrying wood up a mountain, walking with his father who he trusted more than God walking with his father who he loved more than God Dreams of an altar a fire, a sacrifice did it really happen? were his hands really bound? a knife at his … Continue reading Therapy Ten Years Later by Claire Scott→
I’ve noticed that when I get together with friends, we never ask each other, “Did you see [fill in the title of a television program that recently aired]?” as those of my generation once might have. Rather, the question now is, “What are you watching these days?” We no longer assume what we used to assume, which was that our friends have watched the same things on television that we have seen—or, at least, there was once a good chance that they might have. Sometimes, it turns out that we have seen the same programs, … Continue reading The End of the Global Village—On TV Anyway by Miles Fowler→
Bukowski talked about it, the one he threw through the window each drunken night and it still played, a radio indestructible with songs that couldn’t help but bead against my forehead. I think of Johnny Rivers, honeyed in his tenor and hair, the way he sweetened even “Secret Agent Man.” Edgar Allan Poe sat with Bukowski throughout those drinking sessions. What- ever he poured down his gullet had to burn like being tied to a stake, when the Raven began talking Plutonian shores. As a young man I remember summer nights of cheap vodka, … Continue reading A Radio with Guts by Russell Thorburn→
I’d met three of the Partons: Randy and Stella at a festival in Georgia when I was a kid and Dolly at a concert, where I snagged backstage passes from a friend who knew one of the backup singers. I recalled my preteen daughter and I standing in the parking lot next to semis and a butterfly back drop. When Dolly came from behind the semi with two hulking bodyguards and the spotlights came on, her sequined blue jumpsuit and six inch heels lit up, and my daughter tugged at my Polo and asked, “Daddy, … Continue reading The Ornament by Niles Reddick→
The garden bridge, a subtle arc that gathers to its bend the mossy stones of either bank, and to the water lends a stagnant symmetry: the dark tunnel above, the sky afloat below. A tranquil park made upside down, and I, half over, pause upon the brink to watch the willow send its branches heavenward, to drink the light that never ends. Now speak the truth. No shallow gloss will shelter us from moss or earth. Michael Quattrone is the author of Rhinoceroses (New School Chapbook Award, 2006) and the musical album, One River … Continue reading Reflection by Michael Quattrone→
Robert Schultz is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2021 Art Contest Robert Schultz considers himself a fortunate man. A retired Roanoke College English professor, he still follows his daily work schedule, keeping regular hours writing and reading at his desk and working in his studio. He lives on a cul-de-sac in Salem, Va. surrounded by woods and his wife’s bountiful gardens. Then the pandemic hit. “I was rocked by the historical and maddening circumstances which came along and were made worse than needed due to leadership issues,” says Schultz. He was already photographing … Continue reading Robert Schultz: Winner of Streetlight’s Art Search by Elizabeth Howard→
Swimming Again to Meet You, along some enclosed lane where I pass you swimming in the other direction. Decades, I swam into changing light that guided me to temporary rest— So I begin again— the long drive in the northbound lane, up the highway to the farm. Returned to your house, I let myself down into the water of our lives where you waited, cooking, looking for my car crossing the creek bridge. I leave and return, leave, return, and always, there you are, wondering how I manage to do everything I do. Who is … Continue reading Swimming Again to Meet You and In Mist and Gray Light, 2 poems by Roselyn Elliott→
The first place winner of Streetlight’s art contest is Robert Schultz of Salem, Va. Schultz’s work, Specimens of the Plague Year, documents a year in the pandemic with his thoughts, quotes from scholars, poets, and current news events, all illustrated with scanned images of plants and flowers from his wife’s garden. Images are selected from some thirty-seven illustrations in Schultz’s elegant photo journal, Specimens of the Plague Year. A sampling of Schultz’s nature images will be featured in Streetlight January 7-24th. His work will be exhibited at Chroma Gallery, Charlottesville, during February, Robert Schultz … Continue reading Winners of Streetlight Art Search Announced by Elizabeth Howard→
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