Sharon Leiter August 12, 1942—January 15, 2016 “The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.” ― Emily Dickinson It’s with much heartache that we announce the passing of our poetry editor and dear friend, Sharon Leiter. After a two-year battle with cancer, she slipped away on Saturday, surrounded by her loved ones. Sharon was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She studied literature at Brandeis University, where she met her late husband, Darryl, an astrophysicist. Together, they raised their daughter in Virginia, where Sharon taught … Continue reading In Memoriam: Sharon Leiter→
Street of My Life Street of my life, I have left you and I have returned, wandering nights in your renovated future, The deed has passed into my keeping, and the dead, ever gracious, have agreed, to pretend they have never left. Short, unexceptional street, lined on both sides with two-story brick houses, Each with its painted stoop, pouring bruised-legged children down the stone steps, With its flower pots, its wooden bench and iron-fenced “garden,” large enough for a single flowering tree a row of crunchy-leafed bushes, And the last house with its Florsheim … Continue reading Honey and Six Poems by Sharon Leiter→
Smoke —translated from Theophile Gautier’s Emaux et Cemées, 1852-1872 Down there, under sheltering trees: A hunchbacked hovel of the poor— Walls crumbling; roof down on its knees. Moss blots the threshold of the door. The window’s shutter is its mouth. But like a tepid winter breath Exhaled from some living mouth, This hovel shows it’s far from death. It stands there shabby, closed-in, shut. But smoke is spiralling. A corkscrew’s Thin blue thread curls from that hut: Its soul, which carries God the news. Fumée Original French Là-bas, sous les arbres s’abrite … Continue reading Smoke by Len Krisak→
3rd place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest. Flowers in a Crystal Vase – Manet, 1882 At the members only showing of flower paintings, we old folks dress for comfort. Women in flats and boutique slacks, light sweaters, conservative colors, but still striving for a sense of style. We men—not so much. A leather jacket seems to be the best we can do. As if somewhere in the back of our memory, a whisper tells us this makes us debonair, perhaps a little dangerous, walking among still-life flower arrangements. The young guards herd … Continue reading Flowers in a Crystal Vase by Les Bares→
2nd place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest. Rubble The water found a home in our wreckage. Our city, once a bastion of high times— colored lights on strings, avenues smiling all year churches, bars, and streets filled with strutting horns, jerk sauce and hips— now choked in trash bags whistling like reeds on a wade-through, snaring limbs, dragging us down. Remain calm, we say, dragging strangers from the rubble. Our founders, rebels, saviors in bronze and silver toppled. Straight-backed stoics fighting silent acid tears, reduced to river-street ruck floating alongside bright orange … Continue reading Rubble by Pernille Smith Larsen→
1st place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest. Hum Out of the blue, he gave her a recording. She thought there was something wrong with it, but they had only slept together once, she wasn’t even divorced yet: she didn’t know how these things worked. Do you tell someone there is something wrong with what they’ve given you? She didn’t know Glenn Gould how he hummed what was in his head as he played. Maybe the recording wasn’t very good or she was not listening well. She couldn’t really tell much but that … Continue reading Hum by Julie Ascarrunz→
Temple Age Sycamores phrasal, ashen, strap, bi-chromatic, this cross-hatched, argent patch of woods. Respond with hard answers, please. My season is upon me. Green in there somewhere, yes, even red, if I hash around? Goodbye beauty, I might also say. Depart loveliness, at last. Passing by pallid fields, I confess I dreamed of us. Precarious weeks, these, yet you never want me small. Or parceled. Rather all. Little Song Who dies but once? Evening bears the brunt of incinerated prayer, endless as a tale unsnared by denouement, in closure small as the … Continue reading Temple Age by Lisa Russ Spaar→
Whenever I run into Lisa Russ Spaar she seems scarcely to have aged since I first met her, eons ago, in Gregory Orr’s graduate poetry workshop at the University of Virginia. Tall and lithe, with long blonde hair she pushes back from her face and a vibrant, lovely smile, Lisa could easily be taken for a grad student. But as we all know, looks can be deceptive, and Lisa Russ Spaar has come a long way in the years since our first acquaintance. She is a much loved professor of English and Creative Writing at … Continue reading The Poetry of Desire→
In His Own Right A conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate and Charlottesville resident Charles Wright What the city of Charlottesville, Virginia lacks in size it makes up for in culture. You won’t go ten minutes without passing a building bearing a whimsical mural, a metal sculpture gracing the bypass, or banners advertising book and film festivals and Live Arts performances. So we’re particularly proud to call poet Charles Wright one of our own, and not just because he’s the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Wright served as a professor of English at the University of Virginia … Continue reading Interview with Poet Laureate Charles Wright→
Phone Sex in Three Acts Act I. There is nothing noble about having phone sex with your ex-girlfriend in the bathroom of a friend’s apartment. The shower curtain looks offended. Tile ashamed to touch bare feet, toes curling. Mildew in the bathtub corner is judging me. This is no bad porno. No fictional pleasure. I am only flesh, muscle, and blood. A collection of parts that ache and spill over. She loves him now. But we still search the static of each other’s lonely, trying to pull and honest fuck out of the phone … Continue reading Phone Sex in Three Acts by William Knudsen→
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