“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
“Hi, lol, xd. Hello ppl, xd.” My sister forwarded me this cryptic Skype message, received from our father on his ninety-sixth birthday. He’d apparently sent it to her daughter in New Zealand. Jokey acronyms were hardly his style, so in other circumstances we might have worried about his state of mind. We were indeed rattled, but for a different reason. He’d been dead for the last eighteen months. Our first thought was that our dad’s account’s been hacked, though it seemed a strange way to launch something sinister. And rather late in the game, since … Continue reading Tackling the Digital Afterlife by Elizabeth Bird
Looking for Theopista who is called a saint, painted by Lippi who is called by Browning a brothel-john in monk’s clothing and, in the poem, admits his out-of-boundsness, and paints Job nearby with a label “Job” and made long love to a nun and got away with it because, rich Cosimo de Medici the Elder told anyone who would listen, Lippi was a heavenly form in fleshy flesh, no dray horse he. Looking for and finding the woman of the lost-luggage cab. And finding the woman of middle-age elegance pushing a wheelchair. And finding the … Continue reading A First Visit to the Uffizi by Patrick T. Reardon
For many years my photography was travel-based, focusing on ghost towns and other places in glorious decline. Decay and rust attracted me because of their fabulous color gradients often found in very spectacular light, mainly out west in the Great American desert. Over time, I also became interested in spontaneously occurring subjects of funky material that might be broadly considered to pass for abstract modern art. Outside travel for me then intermittently morphed into a visit to an outdoor museum. The intensive targeted micro forage of a limited area became my modus operandi. This … Continue reading The Eclectic Photography of William C. Crawford
My father dulled his surmise. He rang the register, count ‘em Greenback and copper upon the eye. Blue black fell on Harlem. He poured the day into olive canvas bag Pocketed the gun, flicked alarm switch Left the shop, turned key to drag His gloom, eyes hooded, pitch. He drove 125th Street to the bank Parked out front under the trestle. The bag chuted down night deposit, sank. He did it 30 years like a dog deaf to a whistle. Richard Oyama’s work has appeared in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American … Continue reading The Book of Nights by Richard Oyama
Long, long ago when I was young, someone I knew told me how much it meant to her to read Candide. In fact, she read it over and over. It was inspiring. I wanted to say, “Are we talking about the same book?” How could the deep cynicism I’d seen in that book be inspiring? But she was old and I was young, so, instead of arguing, I filed for future reference. Then there’s this story, perhaps a koan, I first heard at one of those self-help meetings so popular in that same era. It … Continue reading Candide’s Garden by Susan Shafarzek
We are pilgrims in the earth and strangers— we come from afar and we are going far. –Vincent van Gogh Abroad for some time now following our family’s wishes without much success or happiness. I sense their exasperation, their disappointment growing— soon there will be no tolerance left, even for an eldest son. I prefer not to speak of it except to you, brother. I hold up a mirror to the deep things which pass through me, sometimes flickering, sometimes blazing, always indomitable— feeling no connection to these plans for me. This I freely admit. … Continue reading Abroad by Brent Short
Tim Collyer is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2025 Flash Fiction Contest Career Day smells of bleach and gravy. Wrong and familiar at once, like medicine in birthday cake. Margaret sits on a child’s blue chair, jaw still tender from yesterday’s biopsy. The scarf over her scalp isn’t a statement, just warm. Emma twists her book bag strap round and round, marking time with what they don’t discuss. A builder talks about bricks. A paramedic shows a stethoscope and every child leans forward. Margaret once wrote columns about the sound of crisp pastry giving way, about wine that tasted of … Continue reading The Taste of Copper Pennies by Tim Collyer