These searched for their family records, but could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. Ezra 2:62 I can’t tell you exactly what percent of my waking hours is spent looking for things. It could be as little as twelve percent. Probably closer to thirty. It’s worse at certain times of the year. Tax season seems to be a period when I drive myself mad searching for one thing or another: proof of a charitable contribution, a 1099 form, a statement from my Swiss bank saying everything’s cool. In my … Continue reading Missing by Richard Key→
Ocean wind pushes the four of us with such force that we lean onto each other perched side-by-side on a pile of rocks – daughter, mother, daughter and the father standing behind. The mother’s face covered with curls, all of us laughing at the wind, camera barely balanced and ticking time for the shutter to open and close. Straight strip of sand stretching north was barren for miles, but for sandpipers, seagulls and the plovers who paused and ran, paused and ran again. Today, another generation of plovers, their sons and daughters still pause and … Continue reading A Photograph From That Summer on Point Reyes by Martha E. Snell→
Kay Rae Chomic is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest Stephanie climbed her porch stairs, nodded at the two pumpkins with carved misshapen noses, mouths, and teeth. One smiled, one frowned. Both held cigars in place by incisors. Inside the house, she hung her purse on the coat tree in the foyer, stripped off her clothes, and dashed to the shower to wash off the day. Judgment day. Wrapped in her robe, a towel coiled around her hair like a turban, she mixed a Manhattan, sat on the sofa next … Continue reading The View by Kay Rae Chomic→
I’m standing here on Heather Street Beside empty buildings that used to be the RCMP’s. A lot now owned by the government, leased To the film industry. A building where they shoot Movies of people acting out their dreams. I’ve seen cops pull up- ‘check locks’, Move props in and out. 11 at night, “private” Security guard tells me need to leave. Release Video footage on demand of me, I was walking By and a man was waiting there in the lot with his trunk Open. I heard two shots fire; actors running From a … Continue reading Heather Street by Jasper Glen→
I gave up early: and went to a houseboat to mourn: both named a beer and splashed next to woes about your love in a bunk of redwood done messy by stinkbugs. your adjectives were pointed the day that barley was cut, reckless, in Groningen: ………. sultry. magnetic.. taut …… .and then you said you would arrive on time, or late to draw me out and push on my groin– and the void in between us became not measured in feet but in eye glances gone awry: looking at the cusp of … Continue reading The Amstel by Isaac Amend→
To the new family I sent a letter about the house and our memories of living there for forty-five years. I did tell them lots of information about the house that they needed to know. I gave advice about things to do. I was helpful. I did not tell them how heartbreaking it was for us to move our mother to a memory care facility —her new forever home. I did tell them we’d been happy. I did tell them about the bleeding hearts that grew by the side of the house and seeing a … Continue reading The Letter by Cheryl Somers Aubin→
Morels ………………….For Tom Proutt In my latest unsuccessful hunt for the unicorn of the woods, I found a two-point buck skull, a square of soapstone, a 1952 Mennen bottle, and a foxhole. Lots of fiddleheads, lots of May apples, and an ant floating in a pool of water in a leaf. A snail slugged its way across the duff as birds and squirrels sang and chittered in the branches above. The dog ran chasing sticks and splashing through the creek bed. I think I may have discovered a spring, but I am not certain: water … Continue reading Morels and Fun, 2 poems by Stuart Gunter→
John Adinolfi is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest All the times of their lives happened at the shore. She was a lifeguard. He was beach patrol. He tripped over her rescue board and she bandaged his wounded leg. Six weeks later they were married at sunrise, with ocean foam slapping at their feet. Soon, she was building sandcastles with their youngest while he taught the older ones how to surf cast. Later, grandkids would overrun their beach house every summer. Then, when it was just the two of … Continue reading Down the Shore by John Adinolfi→
A soldier brings his torn field jacket to her “So much blown to pieces,” he says. She carries the heavy scent of tobacco and you can almost see the charred buildings in her eyes like gravestones. “There’s always someone who wants to break the world,” she answers. She leads him to her bed again where he can take her to the forgetting places and he strokes her hair and his lips trespass all along her breasts as he claims her for his inviolate country. And later when they share a cigarette —even as a bomb … Continue reading The Ukrainian Seamstress by Gary Beaumier→
All along the coastline of Japan, hundreds of tall stone tablets stand as warnings about the possibility of natural disasters. Many date back to the 1880s, when two deadly tsunamis battered the coast and killed more than twenty thousand people. Carved with care, the ancient tablets convey messages from one generation to the next, advising those who read them to seek high ground after an earthquake, and to avoid low-lying areas in case of floods. One of the most well-known is called the Aneyoshi tablet, a four-foot slab of stone placed high up on the … Continue reading Tsunami Stones by Karen Mittelman→
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