Marjory Ruderman is the 1st place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest Phoebe was busier than ever, juggling depression and a midlife crisis. She dreamt of favorable circumstances becoming chaotic. A swimming pool displaced the boxes in her attic, its tiled bottom Escher-stepped and undulating. The water teemed with strangers. “Not serious buyers.” The Realtor at Phoebe’s elbow aimed her pen at the hordes of people there for the free swim in a structurally bewildering pool. Phoebe had never had a chance to enjoy the calm of a solitary swim, and now she … Continue reading Free Swim by Marjory Ruderman→
It is well into night, and she moves slowly. Her sword pierces the water that slides away like sheets of ice. Bubbles spin into small vortices that carry her forward. She pushes the water, and the water pushes back. The long barrel of her body arcs from side to side as she swims, propelled by her tail fin, scalloped and black, sharp as a sickle. Water, eye, and brain, are all one. Her looking links intention to muscle. Specks of life—the tiny jellies, the embryonic fish and crabs and eyeless shrimp—crowd together into the layer … Continue reading The Swordfish by Leslie Middleton→
Steps and measurements, bullet points of to-dos with creation in mind. Beautiful guidelines meant only to guide. It is here that I begin, here that I write something of worth, something to heal, where I grow again on this journey of life. I look back at the penciled recipes before me, remembering these can be erased, rewritten, and that there is room to improve. Two cups of this. A dash of that and mix it all together . . . but do I really wanna mix it? What if I don’t have that ingredient? This … Continue reading Recipes by Matthew Berg→
Splish! Splash! There’s high drama in the clashes of two wine glasses, martini olives swirling, peppermints spinning in the Schnapps! Watermelon, cherries and tomatoes are sprayed fresh and ready to eat! Artist Robin Harris loves to paint, focusing on fluidity and “gastronomic whimsy”—oversized, vibrant paintings playing with images of food and drink, dropping, spilling and splashing in all directions. Her high ceilinged studio delights the senses with paintings of fresh fruit and ice cream cones, newly poured Manhattans and a lemon twist balancing on the lip of a margarita. … Continue reading Robin Harris Makes a Splash!→
Speeding between the endless fields of corn and beans 70 . . . 75 . . . “This old junker might make it to 80” . . . Some girl who knows the meaning of, uh, ‘Hey hit the highway!’ I sang it, shouting it, shoulders and head rocking. I was cradled between those cornfields so well I could love the song and the singing and feel secure, even when speeding, so that the world would blur into color and sound as I jetted on my desires. Yet behind the words were the truths all … Continue reading Singing along with Mellencamp’s ‘I Need a Lover that Wont Drive Me Crazy’ by N. S. Boone→
Mexican-American. Latino/a. Are the hyphens and slashes connecting these forces more like borders or bridges, separating or unifying to the touch? Why can’t I superimpose Mexican and American so that they Rest upon each other like stacked hands, and then maybe we would see transparently, the redundancy of those two worlds. I cannot occupy entirely one or the other, so I live within that hyphen, on that see-sawing slash. I become the bridge, a body split, but connected as one. For years it was a contemplative space of confusion. With age I have created a … Continue reading Mexican-American by Amanda Rosas→
Casting the Current I waited hours on the bank while Dad kept trying for a couple browns. He was far downstream when the first big drops cratered the water. All afternoon, the dark bruise of a storm had been closing in over the hills, but he waded out farther with the rushing current, casting long, slow loops over the ripples, some lifted by breezes, others blown aside like a bird in a gust of wind. Cigarette dangling, he moved carefully, shifting his footing around slippery rocks, past slopes that fell away in darkness below, someone … Continue reading Casting the Current and What’s Forgotten, 2 poems by Ronald Stottlemyer→
During the 1970s, I volunteered to answer phones at two different telephone crisis centers, in two different states, one in Ohio and the other in Massachusetts. When we picked up the phones at these centers, my colleagues and I never knew what sort of question or problem our anonymous callers were going to have for us. It might be anything from, “My spouse (parent, teacher, friend, etc.) doesn’t understand me,” to “I just took an oval-shaped, white pill with the number 333 stamped on it, and I wonder what effects I can expect,” to “I … Continue reading The Hotline by Miles Fowler→
Jared lies in bed, propped up by his arms folded behind his head, a two-day stubble peppering his face and neck. One foot dangles off the side of the mattress. Dark, wiry hairs spring out of his leg, exposed by pajama pants hiked up mid-calf, bunched and wrinkled like old parchment because he doesn’t believe in ironing pajamas. You’re just gonna sleep in them and wrinkle them anyway. Besides, no one’s going to see them. No one except Lisa, who’s in the bathroom brushing her teeth with the door open. He half-smiles and says to … Continue reading Sliced by E.H. Jacobs→
Listening to Buckthorn “Although Wordsworth is [in the opening of The Prelude] describing the activity of composing aloud, of walking and talking, what the poetry reaches into is the activity of listening.”—Seamus Heaney I like the sound of a word in wood, of Wordsworth’s rhythm walking where the poem goes. A trail is there but muddied over. The way around crosses last fall’s soggy oak leaves. (Right sock soaked through.) Spring words shine like sun-baked bronze, and finally some signs of green: early shoots sound their syllables in a few lighted spots. It turns out … Continue reading Listening to Buckthorn and Rainbow Bridge, 2 poems by Daniel Fliegel→
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