Tuesday, Januay 7th. My son Charlie called. He was breathless. He had barely escaped the Palisades. The sky had been clear, he said when he took the actor John Goodman’s retriever, Miss Daisy, to the vet. But when he returned a couple of hours later, black clouds of smoke and flames blotted out the sun. A hurricane strength wind had ignited the brush in Temescal Canyon north of Sunset Boulevard. The fire now engulfed the Palisades, a neighborhood on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway. Sirens wailed, police and fire engines raced up Sunset. … Continue reading Wild Fires by Trudy Hale→
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash. I. a. This morning, I saw a creature standing in the road. The size of a small dog with rust-colored fur. But even from a distance, I could see electricity shuddering just beneath its skin. A taut wildness that disappears with domesticity. b. For years now, I’ve lived in the West, in places that once were desert. Where the air is dry, and the bugs are few and no one cares quite so much if you graduated from one of the Ivies. Sometimes, I return East in August and … Continue reading Fragments From Returning to the Suburban Neighborhood of My Youth by Sharon Gelman→
Immigration Service Camp, Kenedy, Texas – May 1944 Nearly two years had passed since a Peruvian policeman pointed a pistol at him and declared Tadashi Yamada to be “under arrest.” The employee of a Japanese food store in Lima, Tadashi, along with hundreds of other Japanese and Japanese-Peruvians, soon found himself shipped off to internment in Camp Kenedy, Texas. Seizing these people through a deal with Peruvian authorities, the United States government hoped to use them as bargaining chips in exchange for Americans held by the Japanese. But that did not happen. Twenty-four and a … Continue reading New Cut Hay by Lawrence F. Farrar→
It was a flat grey stone, the kind you found in tourist shops, with pre-set words. What a strange gift from Andrea, I’d thought, and plunked it into my pocket—carelessly. Only later, I found my hand often curving around it, feeling its weight, its contours. Where was she now? All those nights I found myself awake, throwing on some clothes. Inside my car, I cruised through the dead-quiet night streets. Sometimes, the streetlights, or the cold probing lights left on in closed stores, allowed me a glimpse of a huddled shape under a doorway, or … Continue reading A Stone by Debbie Bennett→
As I marked another donation box I’d filled with my son’s trach supplies, the doorbell rang. Two men in identical ball caps and polo shirts smiled at me from the front steps when I opened the door. The shorter of the two, handsome and well-built, gestured with a clipboard and said, “Afternoon. My name’s Lance. How’s your day going so far?” I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” “Good.” He nodded. “That’s good. Beautiful afternoon, beautiful neighborhood. And we have a beautiful opportunity that folks like you lucky enough to live here qualify for. Won’t be … Continue reading Flowers by William Cass→
I wanted to write about hunting season here in the rural countryside, the howling packs of dogs, the men and women who sit in muddy trucks on the side of the road with loaded guns, waiting, and the orphaned black bear cubs. I also wanted to write about my Mississippi cousin who transported cross-country in the back of his Toyota pickup, a taxidermied bear’s head bagged on a Native American reservation in New Mexico. But October calls me, like the wild and wild things, to write about my wild nephew. He will be turning twenty … Continue reading Call of the Wild by Trudy Hale→
I had heard when you get older you revert to a lot of your tastes and activities when young, but I disregarded it, until I started buying old Joni Mitchell and Buffalo Springfield albums, and listening to the Beach Boys and James Taylor in the car. Now I am riveted to a 230-acre ranch in the high coastal mountains of British Columbia, with wild horses and meadows bordered by beautiful woods full of aspens and birch, and even taller, snow-covered mountains in the distance. A few days ago, one of the spunkiest, fiercest of the … Continue reading The Little Colt by Laura Marello→
Erik awakens full of pain, lying in a hospital bed in a propped position, his throat sore from the tube that snaked down into his mouth and nose, his limbs heavy and bruised. His head feels like it belongs to someone else. The lights are low in his hospital room and he hears the soft whir of machines. No one is in the room with him that he can see. Panic floods his heart as he remembers the accident: the whirl of lights, the spinning crush of metal. And ten-year-old George, his son, in … Continue reading Erik and George by Ty Phelps→
Hey, son. It’s your Mama. Hope y’all are doing good up there. I’m callin’ cause I’ve got a little problem here. So, did you hear about that storm we had a couple days ago, that derecho? Well, none of us had ever heard of one before, either. It was a perfectly nice day and then the wind starts a blowin’ and sounding like a big ‘ole freight train. The trees in the front yard were all bent over double. I’m telling you, it was like the end of days—I never heard such a noise … Continue reading Cats by Christine Tucker→
It’s just a stupid old oak tree, I keep telling myself, while I sit at the kitchen table and watch the white winter sunlight bathing its branches. It’s dying, I say, as I wipe away tears and busy myself with numbing, necessary tasks. Its branches are dropping and it’s trying to tell us and it’s going to kill someone in the process, I think, on frigid, windy nights when its massive canopy creaks and arches over yards humming earlier in the day with shrieking children and yapping dogs. It’s necessary, I explain to a … Continue reading Stupid Old Oak Tree by Kathleen McKitty Harris→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
