Patricia Hemminger has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest Consider the pattern of UV light directing bees to the flower’s center. Magnetic fields, unfelt by us guiding geese in migration. The low inaudible sounds elephants hear with approaching kin. That butterflies stand on a leaf to taste with their feet. Tiger moths ultrasonic clicks jam bats’ echolocation beams. And snakes have holes in their faces to detect their prey’s infrared radiation. I tell you again she is gone forever. You answer not all things can be seen. Patricia Hemminger’s experience of growing … Continue reading Out of Range by Patricia Hemminger →
Gary Beaumier has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest Once I shuffled along the wings of biplanes I know this because I always fall in my dreams from very high and unsurvivable places tugged inexorably toward cliffs by some invisible force or tumbling off high buildings When I get old and rickety like those planes I’ll take one burst of wind too many and collapse mid flight impossibly high guy wires slackened trailing struts or tail fins as they are loosed spinning rapidly toward a thicket of trees Maybe my last words … Continue reading Hello Icarus by Gary Beaumier →
Ion Corcose has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest When I first gazed upon the world, eyes like a dragonfly over a field of grass, I did not see lightning or crows, or a camel stubborn on its knees. I did not see a man pluck hair from a rabbit, rub chilli into the eye of a cow, burn a monkey with a blowtorch; telling the truth came later. I remember learning that the word for truth in Greek, aletheia, means to reveal the forgotten. Looking inside, I found Rumi eating a … Continue reading Yoghurt with Honey by Ion Corcose →
Susan Muse has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest Clouds flatten against a gray sky and cover what had once been the color of bluebonnets only a moment ago. Suddenly rain begins washing the windshield as we turn and head for Houston. Earlier, in San Antonio the sun squatted down to squeeze the breath from my chest, like smoking my first Luck Strike at 10. We had hidden from it in the quiet cool of the mission and ran our hands over rough rock, cracked like old bones or parched earth. … Continue reading History Lesson by Susan Muse →
Erik Wilbur has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest As she prepares a mirepoix for the soup—her spine curled slightly over the blade, over a chipped laminate countertop—I consider that a woman can only live for so long like a stilt-house pillar in a flood. Fuck the floods of her life: . . . The flood of the drunk asleep in her bed . . . The flood of her daughter pawning heirlooms for drugs . . . Silently, I curse the ones I know of until the soup simmers. Then we … Continue reading Visiting My Mother After Her Layoff by Erik Wilbur →
Derek Kannemeyer has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest My father planted this fig tree. 25 years ago, the last time my folks visited. The flight back got too much for them-—missed connections, no sleep, lost luggage. And I put in a sapling plum, with dad’s help, but that one’s died since. I thought the fig was dying too, but on the phone, my dad just laughed. The day that fig tree dies is the day that I die. We scattered the ash of him five years ago, but his fig tree … Continue reading Ray’s Fig Trees by Derek Kannemeyer →
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