In both Ruth L. Schwartz’s Edgewater and Brian Gilmore’s Elvis Presley is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem, the speakers tempt God: “tell me why you ever thought/ you could improve on this/ music, this hunger[1]”. They call out the crazy notions floating around in both American history and its politics. The difference between […]
As a self-described “movie buff,” Crystyn C. Wright loves films, especially those reflecting the lives of African Americans. At one time, the Bronx-native, going by mainstream’s offerings, settled on the assumption that not enough black filmmakers were producing those films. That assumption was corrected after she traveled to various film festivals. But Wright, a journalist […]
This essay appears in the Literary Organizations Issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Whether walking through Bowie Town Center, Forestville and Iverson malls—or even Pentagon City—I still feel the void despite the retail shops that have popped up in spaces once occupied by Karibu Books. To understand this void is to know that the independent bookstore was […]
The scene is nighttime. A woman struts down D.C.’s U Street, ready for a night out on the town. Everything about her exudes feistiness. Every bit of that spunk and spirit is in her thigh-high dress and wide shiny belt, her fishnet stockings and black leather jacket. Even her auburn-colored blowout is flared in peacock […]
Alan W. King 