John Elsberg Poetry Contest Winner

by | May 15, 2014 | Features

The lines have all been pulled in and we found a few with some really juicy claws–er, we mean poetry. We’re happy to share that our wonderful friend Sue Ellen Thompson has chosen Jennifer Keith as winner for the John Elsberg Poetry Contest first place...
Love & Money & Strangers

Love & Money & Strangers

by | May 11, 2014 | Features

The neon strobes its metallic blue: Sister Fay. The palm reader picks out love and money at the lunch pail intersection of Reisterstown and Liberty Roads. Northward, Julianna Spallholz reads her own palm. She plays a few numbers, and once spent an hour lightly...

Ten Cents a Dance

by | Mar 26, 2014 | Spotlight

The Babe Ruth Museum on Emory Street where the Sultan of Swat was born is also the ground zero of Barbara DeCesare’s multi-syllabic night life. “I’ve crashed—on couches—on nearby Paca, Eutaw, Lemmon Streets. Big Bam’s ghost—he knows me. Bummed a smoke off me, once.”...

A Britt in the Room

by | Feb 27, 2014 | Spotlight

It’s hard for Alan Britt’s poetry to sneak up on you. It’s like a diesel tractor, full of snorts and groans and clanging parts. A few years ago we heard him all the way in Dallas—a poem about Cuba in Ilya’s Honey. Britt came out of the old Hopkins Writing Seminars in...

Nikia, On the Rocks

by | Feb 10, 2014 | Spotlight

Love at first sight happens to most of us once in a life. It’s happened to Nikia Leopold twenty times. Architecture and painting—shape and color—inform her lines. In the space between the two, fantastic desire climbs hollowed out hand and toe holds. It climbs to...