…………. ………To commemorate the victims of the Khmer Rouge we faced a large number of classrooms the bird outside faced the trees, unvoiced. the winter’s soldier burns the classroom changing our dream into a brimstone lake. the bird still like stone, still watching blood on her face. she wears the blade of clothes. the bird lives here, dozing, but full of blood sense in its eyes. we, trapped here. once the classroom, the way turns to Pol … Continue reading The Bird Lives Here to Wait by Yucheng Tao →
Wendy Fontaine is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Essay/Memoir Contest I need to find my winter boots My daughter is home from college on her freshman spring break, and she wants to wear them to a swim meet. She’s here for such a short time and anxious to see old friends and teammates from her high school swimming years, despite the lousy weather. Three straight days of precipitation, flooding and wind. An atmospheric river, they say, creeping in from the Pacific. Just this morning, as she lay sprawled in her bed, I ran errands through … Continue reading Lost Boots by Wendy Fontaine →
“What’s wrong with pear trees?” I ask, wondering if my dad is getting senile. “Well, they’re an invasive species. They’re not allowed to sell them in nurseries here anymore. They’re very spreadable because of their seeds. The ones in this subdivision are cultivated so they don’t have the thorns, but once the birds start getting to them, and they, you know, do what birds do, the ones that turn up in the wild have the thorns and then they take over everything around them. It’s the monoculture. If you plant only one kind of tree, … Continue reading Foie Gras by Nathan Cover →
A friend once drove out of town so fast he didn’t know if he was headed north or south. He just wanted to make the coast and finally learn how to swim. But that wasn’t true. I knew it was his boyfriend, the metal whip of his tongue that drove him to walk that bridge each night—inevitable as Persephone come September. One night after the bridge whiskey, he asked me to hit him and I should have said no. He said he needed a pain that would come and go like wildflowers in the high … Continue reading Not Unlike Damon and Pythias by Zachary Lundgren →
I don’t want to be eaten by a grizzly, my dad would say every time we were camping. But I wouldn’t want to be here if it weren’t possible. I’m sitting outside, daydreaming, when up the sidewalk strolls my neighbor, his torpid eyes fastened like buttons, his mouth a bloodless sphincter of puckered sanctimony. No matter what we talk about, he somehow finds a way to bring up my father, to remind me that he knew him sixty years ago when they were just boys. I don’t bother reminding him that I’ve always known my … Continue reading Bloodless by Martin Vest →
He perches boldlyon the old phone wiredown Canning Factory Road. He sings killy killy killya violent tune for a falconpainted in colbalt and rust. Sir Toby once disparaged the stanielas an inferior sparrowhawk. Yet here,head down, the wind-hover enchants his prey. Voles scamper into the marsh grass.Young hares cower.I admire his beauty, murder be damned. Marjorie Gowdy writes and paints on her farm at the foot of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Over a long career, she has written essays, poems, short stories, and is working on a historical novel. She … Continue reading The Kestrel Blues by Marjorie Gowdy →
Wendy Kennar is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Essay/Memoir Contest Within my first few years of teaching, the district’s grading system changed. Instead of the familiar A, B, C, D, F letter grades for academic achievement, students would now be graded on a 4, 3, 2, 1 scale. Many teachers at our school, including new teachers like myself and veterans with over a dozen years’ of experience, didn’t like this new system, mainly because it was so vastly different from the traditional grading system everyone knew and understood so well. I believed the change from … Continue reading On A Scale Of . . . by Wendy Kennar →
Human Entanglement After they split the atom, broke our water into hydrogen, and hydrogen, and the oxygen you couldn’t breathe, we and the hydrogen wandered the universe, searching for oxygen for what you were before the water broke, swept you down the river through the rocks over the steep glide of waterfall—the dam that stopped us for that moment, before we knew what it meant to become an ocean of loss. I have to believe in the physics of love: that if two particles—quantums, atoms, humans—become entangled, simply observing one will change the other, instantly, … Continue reading Human Entanglement and Woman, Falling, 2 poems by Karl Meade →
wondering at marriage; at what it’s really like and what it does to you – like: I know that I do love her but will it dislocate my bones? marriage – what then is the piston? what engine drives my father? who will I try to impress? it must be like a headcold – like giving up one of your senses. now it’s summer – I’m single – I walk and see women – temptation still blooms with the red sweating stamin of tropical flowers year round the botanical hothouse. and sometimes wearing clothes … Continue reading The hothouse by D S Maolalai →
Joy. Love. Silliness. These words come to Eileen French’s mind when asked to describe her paintings. A figurative artist at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, French’s oversized portraits feature men and women at play and in spontaneous scenes that suggest animated narratives. French’s recent McGuffey show was called Kinship, a collection of paintings that celebrate the connections between us all, a confluence of souls. Among her paintings are a number that celebrate her daughter, Whitney. She died as a result of domestic violence in 2017 in Charlottesville. She was thirty-three years old. While … Continue reading Eileen French’s Figurative Paintings Celebrate Kinship →
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