Tag Archives: 1st place winner

Of All the Qualities She Could Have Inherited by Abby Murray

Photo of bunch of sunflowers
 

Abby Murray is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2025 Poetry Contest   Of All the Qualities She Could Have Inherited She carries my penchant for flowers she hasn’t learned to identify as weeds. she brings me dandelions, red clover, morning glories, buttercups, even scotch broom, and I prop them up in a vodka bottle on the windowsill because she can’t believe her luck, how nobody fought to collect these beauties before she did, how she found them heaped on yard waste piles or reaching up from the cement or clay beneath utility poles and … Continue reading Of All the Qualities She Could Have Inherited by Abby Murray

Midnight by Cyndy Muscatel

Photo of sand dunes with person walking across them
 

Cyndy Muscatel is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2024 Flash Fiction Contest   Dressed only in her pajamas and Ugg slippers, Rebecca grabbed the parka off the hook and flung it over her shoulders. The weather had turned cold right after Thanksgiving–outside the wind had picked up, scattering leaves and tossing snowflakes hither and thither. She shivered, castigating herself for leaving her book bag in the car. How forgetful could she get? She must have been in a hurry last night when she came home from work. She knew better than to leave anything … Continue reading Midnight by Cyndy Muscatel

Digging by Linda Parsons

Photo of lots of white potatoes
 

Linda Parsons is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2023 Poetry Contest Digging Dirt peppers the sink as I roll palm to palm these golds heaved from the ground with heft and pitchfork, this egglike clutch for soup, stew, hash, roasted, smashed in fall’s coming. I roll them lightly, thin skinned, perfect and misshapen, knobby knuckled. Dirt becomes dust filming my hands I am loath to wash, for here in the grit of new potatoes I am one with the garden, back bent, salt sweat, my own stew of becoming. And I think what else I’ve … Continue reading Digging by Linda Parsons

Appeasement by John Cullen

Photo of bulidings, fences, trees and sheep
 

John Cullen is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2022 Poetry Contest Appeasement Three hundred pounds of pasture mix in the trunk. International Farms estimates .05 percent weed mixed with Kentucky Blue and Meadow Fescue, and I suspect at least fifty percent perennial hope. We bounce up the driveway, and the stars really appear diamond-like. Far from the glow of town we haul bags filled with Colgate Whitening toothpaste, Momma Mia frozen pizzas, boxes of pasta, cans of kidney beans and cubed beef for the coming chili weekend. Half the celestials shine but no longer … Continue reading Appeasement by John Cullen

Robert Schultz: Winner of Streetlight’s Art Search by Elizabeth Howard


 

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