About me
It was an old neighborhood of faded brick and form-stone houses occupied by large, multi-generational families. A crowd quickly gathered around the blazing house. A crowd of housewives shouted, “Don’t let the fire spread. The Riley house is already gone. Just don’t let it spread.” The firemen quickly responded by filling the tar roofs of the adjoining house with water that sizzled and pooled into smoking puddles of black grit. Others in the crowd still moaned, “The whole block’s gonna go,” and put their hands up to their faces.
They chase their destiny over green felt tables in the dark and timeless hours of Baltimore when streets lie empty and barren, and drunks and panhandlers have found shelter for the night in some empty building or dark doorstep. Outside, a solitary moon has risen like a luminous anomaly in a dark and cloudless night while inside some airless smoked-filled room, these men sit transfixed under one-hundred-watt bulbs and study the face of playing cards to chase their dreams. This is the time they feel most alive and, for some, the only time they feel alive.
It was an old neighborhood of faded brick and form-stone houses occupied by large, multi-generational families. A crowd quickly gathered around the blazing house. A crowd of housewives shouted, “Don’t let the fire spread. The Riley house is already gone. Just don’t let it spread.” The firemen quickly responded by filling the tar roofs of the adjoining house with water that sizzled and pooled into smoking puddles of black grit. Others in the crowd still moaned, “The whole block’s gonna go,” and put their hands up to their faces.