And if you were that old collection of smudged walls and dusty glass, you would be embarrassed to be caught by the morning – stretched out fence to fence, your top half in scaffolds, cross in repair from the super storm, gravestones covered September leaves in March, unprepared for the sun, bleary-eyed, pulled from that dream of the underground railroad – belly full of tunnels, tunnels full of bloody songs. And if you were a stone, you would miss the touch of … Continue reading Belleville Reformed Church by Josh Humphrey →
Phyllis Brotherton has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest I carry my brother’s heart all the way to Salina, Kans. When we’re still an interminable hour away, his wife texts, “Hurry.” My wife speeds the rented Traverse up I-35 North, the smoothest, blackest, flattest expanse of four-lane we’ve ever seen. The well-kept interstate, fresh asphalt, closely mown center medians, stretch before us in the 2 a.m. darkness. I imagine the SUV’s front wheels lifting off, separating from tarmac, rising up, flying over these final miles in minutes. Alas, we’re bound to … Continue reading My Brother’s Heart by Phyllis Brotherton →
P. W. Bridgman is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s Flash Fiction Contest She told the story about him, but only once. About how she found him on a chair, pushed up to the kitchen window leaning out over Baskov Lane from their second-floor apartment in Leningrad. He was holding between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand the bloom of a Siberian Fawn Lily, plucked from her window box. His little hand was steady, his gaze was too, as he waited. She dried her hands on her apron, bread rising on the … Continue reading Little Vova* by P. W. Bridgman →
Father Fagus Grandifolia, silver grey with muscled shoulders fingers traced across the soil like a hawk’s nest suturing the slope. Beech tattoos give proof to Jake and Sue that they were, indeed, in love in 1962. Proof that Peter mattered and that Harlon was, in fact, here. Slow growth in acid earth, with polished nut. Sweet scent a dozen decades old still luring pilgrim children to the woods, knives drawn. Ned Kraft, a librarian by trade, has published satire, poetry, and short stories in such places as Phoebe, Against the Grain, Grimoire, The Pennsylvania Literary … Continue reading Beech Tattoos by Ned Kraft →
As I Found It: My Mother’s House Sometimes I envy my baby-boomer friends for having lost their parents quickly. Mine left this life piecemeal. It took my father two painful years to die from cancer, and soon after, without her husband to moor her, my mother began her decade-long descent into dementia. When she could no longer live alone it fell to me to empty her house, a rambling, creaky Victorian on Boston’s South Shore that she had inhabited for over forty years. Paperwork piled high on her desk told a sad tale. … Continue reading Photographer Russell Hart →
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