There are days I wake up in sluggish wonder, newly aware, as a last dream image drifts away, of the marvel of my beloved still beside me in the bed, the fan beating time through the air, and the persistence of this body and mind. Or as the poet Franz Wright would put it in a prayer: You gave me in secret one thing to perceive, the tall blue starry strangeness of being here at all. —The Only Animal “It is strange to be here. The Mystery never leaves you alone.” The Irish priest-poet John … Continue reading The Strangeness of Being Here at All: Franz Wright’s Redemption Story By Alex Joyner→
……….Hello? Is there anybody in there? ……….Just nod if you can hear me. ……….Is there anyone at home? …………..Comfortably Numb …………..Pink Floyd He lay on his side like a wounded animal eyes open toward the window, the morphine drip pulsing through him, the morning light becoming a thick sponge soaking up his breath— until the last angle of sunlight remained buoyant in the air. His bed a slackline where he lay balancing, arms folded, moving into shadow, could he see the dry leaved trees through the window and how they flushed through the snow? Michele … Continue reading Suspended by Michele Riedel→
The Mojave, January 1988 Twenty-five months in the Army and who would put a kid like me in charge of a six million dollar tank? I’ve got a crew of tragically obedient soldiers, all teen-age, one who marries his sixteen-year-old second cousin and another who rides his skateboard to first form- ation every morning. They’re all good kids, but most assuredly children. We’ve been training in the desert for two weeks, in cold, sleet, wind, and constant maneuvering, attack, defend, attack again, with an hour of sleep a day that comes in fits and starts, … Continue reading The Mojave, January 1988 and Hamburgers, Macaroni Salad, and Vanilla Ice Cream at Senior Lunch Today, 2 poems by Bruce Pemberton→
These past two years and three months, since May 2017, have been a special period in my life that I hadn’t expected to experience. During my tenure as poetry editor, it has been my honor to share this labor of love with a group of editors who go way beyond the expectations readers may have of a group of volunteers. Yes, Streetlight Magazine, like so many literary magazines, is produced by a 100% volunteer staff who are dedicated to not only publishing a good looking, accessible lit mag, but to growing the website and its … Continue reading Comings and Goings by Roselyn Elliott→
Stuart Gunter is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest. Finish these sentences to express your true feelings: I always wanted to be intelligent, maybe a college professor, or a poet. Some kind of scientist. I can’t believe I have ended up here: mediocrity. If my father would only rise from the dead. People think of me as intimidating and selfish. Maybe they don’t even think of me. Or they think of me as some kind of rotten fruit in the bottom of the fruit drawer, with a hint of mold and sweet … Continue reading Mental Health Status Exam: Incomplete Sentences by Stuart Gunter→
Natalia Prusinska is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest. I took the jar of jam sealed with heat and wrapped it in old towels. I placed it carefully in my suitcase among the new clothes and carried it home. I walked into an empty apartment and immediately unpacked the jar and placed it on the counter. I tried to open it, but couldn’t. I turned the jar on the counter, every quarter-turn hitting the metal rim with the blade of a knife. I tapped the edge of the jar against the floor, … Continue reading Visiting My Father for the First Time in Five Years by Natalia Prusinska→
Joanna Lee is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest. We found two dead babies on the back granite slab that serves as a stoop, the same we salvaged from up home years ago, decaying in dad’s back yard. Birds. Their legs curled yellow and twisted, contracture of unbecoming; their angry mother with her shiny eye tearing the nails from the roof to get back to the nest we had so carefully sealed. Beside the bodies, the debris of a home: gaping …….hole in the gutters; pale fluffs of matted insulation; a casket-less … Continue reading Mothers’ Day, 2016 by Joanna Lee→
It seemed to me to have been a long time since I devoted serious focus to my creative work—I mean in terms of organizing, keeping track, revising, submitting to journals, compiling a draft manuscript of newer work…the so-called business of poetry. I resolved therefore to spend a weekend at the task. Alas. The weekend revealed to me the extent of my benign neglect: ten years of not-really-being-on-the-ball. I do not consider myself a particularly prolific poet, but I found myself faced with well over a ream of poetry pages, many poems only in their second … Continue reading Neglecting the Work by Ann E. Michael→
Marco Patitucci is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest. We measured small steps as giant leaps and never felt sameness, nameless lunar imposters dancing over the craters singing— but the sound didn’t travel. How tenuous is the tether to gravity in our story? Here lies his and hers— nostalgia in different sizes. On Earth, we searched for our traversing selves and the moon we landed on, chasing reflections of streetlight and headlight, and porch light. How did you steal that anti-gravity and put it in my pocket? You pushed me with such … Continue reading The Moon We Landed On by Marco Patitucci→
Alina Stefanescu is a finalist of Streetlight Magazine’s 2019 Poetry Contest. In my terror-hemmed flesh. The wince against their raised voices of desperate sirens, careful guarding of pulse from impatient ambulance. Fears keep folding and holding me while cars wait for normal patterns to resume. Panic is the metaphysics of knowing anything may be normal en route to normalization. An unworded dream: discovering you, the man I love, in the lobby of frightened husbands who learn the lingo of cancer to buy time for their wives’ lives. The worst would be watching you lose … Continue reading Fear Has No Hospice by Alina Stefanescu→
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