STREETLIGHT WOODPECKER tells the story of Benji, an inept ex-marine who, after being wounded at war, has returned home to his Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia. Following his domineering father’s suicide, Benji is rendered homeless and moves in with his childhood friend Sam, a school teacher who lives alone in the house where he grew up. Benji’s older sister, Elizabeth, does not like this arrangement and raises the same questions that threatened Benji throughout his youth: questions about his manhood and the nature of his relationship with Sam. As Sam attempts to live a normal life, including a budding relationship with Matt, a firefighter from the neighborhood, Benji distracts himself with booze, pills, women and reckless fighting as he attempts to demonstrate his masculinity and escape the memories of wars overseas and at home. Meanwhile, as Sam tries to protect Benji from his own self-destruction, Benji passes his time plotting to kill a bothersome woodpecker that loudly bangs the metal streetlights in the neighborhood.