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→
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→
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→
Masterpieces are hard, manifestos, conversation pieces are easy. Here’s a woman who does sculptures of babies popping out of toasters, the whole thing drenched in a combination of blue and yellow paint— her statement. And here’s a painter who paints weird purple birds distinctively; he’s good with his brushes, we recognize his paintings, but who needs purple birds? What purpose do they serve? I know we’re not supposed to ask these questions— instead critics will praise the artist’s unique subject and style and people will buy her toasters, his paintings, prominately display them on their … Continue reading Purple Birds by William Heath→
This is the place that emptied my father, sucking him through the tunnel of its straw. Four days into a farewell visit, I’ve overdosed on sunlight, rousing the insomniac within. The grass is gravid with alligators; the air poses as sand; cars scaffold a melted wax of spent bugs. Everywhere, I see darkness edging, shadows twitching to keep pace—the gloom that magics the glass into mirror. Jessica Noyes McEntee is a fiction instructor at Westport Writers’ Workshop in Connecticut and a graduate of Amherst College. Her debut chapbook, Jackie O. Suffers Two Husbands, was published … Continue reading Florida by Jessica McEntee→
“An artist is said to be original exactly when he takes up the challenge of tradition and makes us see something more than we already knew.” Demetri Porphyrios. Classical Architecture. I am a fundamentalist. But contemporary connotations dredge up all sorts of pejoratives that I want to dispel. I want you to understand fundamental. There are fundamental math equations, fundamental conventions of a civilized society (etiquette), of language use, rules of public road driving, of constructing a printed book, of lasting friendships, fundamental principles of civil rights in an educated and democratic country. In … Continue reading Bedrock Poetry by Fred Wilbur→
Like Portland or is it Austin I am also trying to keep weird. Nobody says keep Oakland weird. It’s got a gentrifying mix with floaters on top and busted bits settling on the bottom and curious pieces swirling suspended. According to Ferlinghetti simile and metaphor make poetry. Ferlinghetti whom I once saw at Brandy Ho’s getting lunch as was I at the counter after having just bought Carlos Fuente’s Terra Nostra as I needed a novel the size, shape and weight of a brick to give my MFA bildungsroman some DNA like Moby Dick, or … Continue reading Master of Fine Arts by Robert Detman→
Listen When I first conceived of you I was inside a graffiti-covered phone booth near a rundown beach motel. I wept. The OB’s voice on the other end filled with static. You swam through the phone line anyway, lodged for years inside my heart before you sped away. I loved you as best I could, but leaving was what you got good at— lured by street meds, accelerating down tracks that imprisoned us both. Do you ever pass abandoned booths and wish you could make one call? Pick up the phone. Hear my blood pound … Continue reading Listen and Blessing the Way, 2 poems by Cindy Buchanan→
back then on that Bronx block few of us stood a chance against reruns of Lynda Carter’s Bracelets of Submission…..truth lasso or pale décolletage rendering erotic doses of televised justice on a daily basis. but we all know it wasn’t just her alone. so many of the finest neighborhood girls played defense with both their hearts and breasts—and rightfully so— because we’d wetted our tongues too often just to get a chance to one day lick the closest thing we could find to a cinematic Caucasian nipple. and into the Internet and collegiate suburbs we … Continue reading Ode to Wonder Woman by Akhim Yuseff Cabey→
…………Perhaps when the boy built the elaborate scaffolding between sand trays in his first therapy session he was building bridges from me to him. …………Perhaps the melting down of crayons in aluminum foil was alchemy, testing the boundaries of the place he would heal. …………Perhaps the Playmobil medical worker locked in a tiny building while opposing armies fought was for her safety, or for his own. …………Perhaps, in a much later sand tray, the same Playmobil medical worker holding a light at the prow of the boat in dangerous waters was lighting the darkness. …………Perhaps … Continue reading Journey by Billie Hinton→
Streetlight Magazine is the non-profit home for unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, and art that inspires. Submit your work today!
