The familiar constriction arose in her chest. She followed the dark echoes of her husband’s steps; his gait sober as cold coffee. Heel, toe. March. She giggled at the image of her husband as a soldier. His shoulders were still square, but his chest was sunken, and his paunch tightened his shirt. The pain moved into her shoulders as she held her breath against hiccups. “I can drive,” she said, exhaling. “You can hardly walk,” he said. “Try to keep up.” “Try it in heels!” That image caused her to smile. “What’s your hurry? … Continue reading Each in One Piece by Bradley M. Radovich →
I have removed my shirt and am kneeling in a pit looking up at a man pointing a rifle down at me. Quiet, everything is eerily quiet now, the morning’s hissed commands and scrape of shovels long gone. Why will he shoot me? He will shoot me because he has learned he eats better if he does what he is told. He has learned when he drives to the assigned work site and sees along the way twelve vultures competing to rip apart a deer corpse, in the afternoon when he returns he will see … Continue reading Near Biržai, in the Astrava Forest, 8/8/41 by Ben Sloan →
Clichés abound this time of year. It’s the one season in which it’s OK to speak of holiday magic or lapse into sappy memories like those that surfaced recently when I ran across a 1956 photo of 4-year-old me on the lap of Santa Claus. Understand, I’m talking about The Santa Claus—not some run-of-the-mill helper who brings up the rear in an annual Christmas parade. I mean he who sat upon the throne-like chair in Richmond’s Miller & Rhodes for the latter half of the 20th Century. Whole books have been written about his reign, … Continue reading A Visit With Santa by Priscilla Melchior →
My name is Mario Loprete. I live in Catanzaro, a small Calabrian city in the south of Italy. We are in the land that the ancient Greeks called “Magna Grecia,” rich in culture and history. I also travel a lot. I rent a house in European cities that could inspire my work and consolidate some work relationships with galleries and collectors that I began on the internet. Artistically, I am self-taught, studying the history of art in Catanzaro and the great masters of art—Mattia Preti, Caravaggio, Rembrandt—without external contaminations. I studied at an art shop … Continue reading Italian Artist Shares New Concrete Ideas →
Podcast: When a woman faces the loss of a beloved, aging pet, she finds herself confronting her own experience with age and death. Read the story online: Ernestine Goes to Heaven by Susan Heeger
Tara Lindis is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest. The children do not have life jackets. We give them ours. Their slender arms slide through the adult sized holes, we tighten the black webbed straps as far as they can go, and click the plastic buckles. The orange vests rise to their ears; black eyes and tufts of black hair stick out like baby chicks. In the dark early morning, we smell the rain coming, and we know it’s the last crossing before the onset of winter storms. Prayers now. … Continue reading One Hundred by Tara Lindis →
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