Cover Story
Literary LEO 2015
The Storm Generation Literary LEO was founded in 1993 as an open forum for unpublished, original work, representing the creative voice of our city. Among the contributors to that first issue was Kentucky’s outlaw poet, Ron Whitehead, who is also the subject of Jinn Bug’s first-place black and white photo “Iconoclast,” published on this issue’s…
LEO Playlist 2/3
1) “Don’t Disconnect” by Sarah Jaffe, who plays the Clifton Center on Wednesday, Feb. 11. 2) “Anthem” by Kawehi, who plays Zanzabar on Wednesday, Feb. 4. 3) “Everything Is Alright” by Motion City Soundtrack, who will be at Mercury Ballroom on Wednesday, Feb. 4. The next four bands are playing this year’s Forecastle (July 17-19).…
Concert Review: Jalin Roze, 1200, Touch AC & The Smoke Shop Kids, Shadowpact at Mercury Ballroom
Anymore it’s a herculean effort to drag my sorry ass out of the house. I have a baby girl at home. I’ve tried to teach her to cook for herself, and have even signed her up to Career Builder, because she’s got to pull her weight, but she’s just ornery like that. And at four…
The six best local songs of the month
This January has been the worst. I have a newborn daughter who I’d love to play in the snow with and a job that would potentially grant snow days, which are like Christmas miracles after the fact. Who doesn’t want a surprise day off? But this month has been gray and moderate temperature-wise — generally…
Meet Man Bartlett, a New York City-based artist who is doing a residency in Louisville in conjunction with IDEAS 40203
Man Bartlett is many things: visual artist, graphic artist, video artist, performance artist and more, and his work has been seen everywhere from Freies Museum in Berlin to a Best Buy store. But for the next few weeks, he’s in Louisville for the first time, working on a residency project in conjunction with the local…
A Forecastle lineup breakdown: calculated risks, sure-things, hometown heroes and second-wave hopefuls
Last year’s Outcast-Jack White-Beck-The Replacements headlining group was a juggernaut. It was this perfect storm of nostalgia, maintained relevance and levels of buzz that were probably impossible to actualize. It made the festival’s reputation shine a little brighter — especially with the dense middle part of the line-up — and, if you’re someone, like me,…
Flash Fiction 1st Place – Literary LEO 2015
A LOAD OF WHITES by Dallon Adams It was laundry day. I was at the bar across the street from the Laundromat. I thought of all the glorious innovations that had made middle-class life moderately bearable for such a marginal amount of time. The model home we air-dropped in the Iron Curtain in the 50s…
Flash Fiction 2nd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Good Neighbors Make Good Fences by Jinn Bug Jack has a white picket fence he’s been rebuilding this summer. His wife died last year; I catch glimpses of Jack working in his back yard; he’s one house down, hidden behind the old Graninger store. Most evenings I have a little “over the fence” visit with…
Flash Fiction 3rd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Home by Richard Hanson She had it all: a CEO’s wife, four big sons – bam, bam, bam, (pause) bam – joined everything, even mother’s garden club and league of women voters, worked in the not-for-profits, immigrant maid and nanny, country club home, Vale ski retreats. But love left, dad retreating with boys to videogames.…
Something Different ?1st Place – Literary LEO 2015
“Dead at 30” by Devin Katayama
Poetry 1st Place – Literary LEO 2015
I still ride TARC (blahzay-blahzay) by Bernard Clay I still ride the tarc buses… with their pissy smelling seats gum stuck to feet odor of butt and malt liquor overhead fluorescent light flickers back bench full of shopping bags seats tattooed with graffiti tags redundant ringing of stop bells old vets spittin’ tall tales lames…
Poetry 2nd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Everyone by Emmaly Saliga Everyone is fat in the candy aisle, in lawn chairs tipped back like a kid class act, clown, crash cream-colored bell bottoms are a palette for pepto-bismol makes you puke like pepsi makes you burp the alphabet bet me ten bucks you can; your easy bake oven can-can gulps air and…
Poetry 3rd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Being Picked Up by an ?Absent Father by Allyson Majors was like getting an empty present At least it was the thought that counted Walking through Jefferson Mall with a man who tells me he still loves my mother as we pass Foot Locker is similar to hearing the score in a movie theater because…
Poetry Honorable Mention – Literary LEO 2015
Tidy Mess by Glen Hilas Homeless man goes through a trash can Blows his nose with a used napkin, Combs his hair in the reflection of An office window
Short Fiction 1st Place – Literary LEO 2015
The Kind of Story a Coat Tells by Kaitlyn Burd Lucy sits on the lip of the bathtub, smoking a cigarette out a window of an apartment that is not her own. A soft knocking interrupts the comparison she’s drawing between herself and a radio broadcaster who plays songs once everyone has already fallen asleep.…
Short Fiction 2nd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Blind Date by Edward Jesse Capobianco It’s not the classiest of restaurants, but it is a cut above your average Sunday-night-family-outing place. Dim lighting, glasses that actually lived up to their name, cloth napkins. “What is it about cloth napkins that says: ‘this is a formal meal’?” “Huh?” She looks up from her drumming fingernails…
Short Fiction 3rd Place (tied) – Literary LEO 2015
Snow Day By Peter Stavros I’m not ready for this goddamn weather, as I sit in traffic, the expressway a parking lot, first snowfall of the year, a couple inches at most yet still enough to cause chaos, like no one has ever seen snow before in Louisville, a city that can’t decide if it’s…
Short Fiction 3rd Place (tied) – Literary LEO 2015
Why I Did Not Accept Your Invitation by Erin Fitzgerald I know. You’re mad. Or hurt. Or disappointed. Perhaps all of the above. It’s not personal. Really, it’s not. Or maybe it is. Too personal, perhaps. But not in the way you think. Oh, hell – before I dig myself in deeper, just let me…
Short Fiction Honorable Mention – Literary LEO 2015
A Different Kind of Haunting by E. Gail Chandler Just before my dad slid into the embrace of Alzheimer’s, he called me. “Everything not gone from my office in two weeks is going to the Hughes County Historical Society. Everything.” My sisters and I came as bid. The room was a mountain of papers, documents,…
Something Different 2nd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Never Say Never: A Multiple Choice Exam by Mary O’Dell 1. She was born into a.) the Corleone family b.) an all-girl orchestra c.) a pygmy clan who bought the local movie theater 2. But from the time she was a.) big enough to tap dance b.) six months old c.) accustomed to all that…
Something Different 3rd Place – Literary LEO 2015
Emergency Preparedness (an assembled poem) by Jean Tucker Plan how to take care of your pets. Never swaddle a loon. If the bird is young, roast or broil. Do not use candles or open flames. Never use water, as this will only spread the fire. Never place a loon in a small body of water.…
Staffpicks
JAN. 28 -31 Free Week Various Locations do502.com/freeweek Free; 8 p.m. (all days) By now, you have probably heard of Free Week — 15 local bands, four venues, four nights, all free — and have plans for what shows you are going to, but here’s a reminder: on Wednesday, Jan. 28, Coliseum, Xerxes, Parlour, The…
Ghost Lights
I did not expect to ever see anything surface by local dub legends The Children, especially so many years after their apparent dissolution. With “Ghost Lights,” The Children blend their overt dub influences with a nice instrumental post-punk kind of vibe, which you might think would make for particularly sunny music, as is often the…
Big Dark Love
Murder By Death has always looked to push their sound into new territory, but with “Big Dark Love” (out Feb. 3) they hit something that transcends pushing boundaries or not being redundant.The parallels — between the ominous, piercing voice of Adam Turla and the ambient, dreamy directions they’ve flirted with before, but go all in…
Against the Wall of Forever
If there is such a thing as party metal — and maybe there is and I’m blissfully unaware — then this qualifies. Spearheaded by former Louisvillian Doug Walker, of Nixon/The Hookers acclaim (to name a few), Monolith plays a brand of metal that recalls the greats of the ’70s and ’80s, such as Iron Maiden…
Needle
Jonathan Glen Wood seems as much a musician as he does the spirit of getting shit done. His second EP in less than 30 days during the final months of 2014, Wood is putting out quality content at an inspirational rate. Where “Alone” (released Nov. 27) served as a meditation on ambience and space, “Needle“…
b-sides: The Mike Tracy Brazilian Ensemble
Mike Tracy spoke to LEO just after returning from one of his many trips to Brazil, where he visited friends and soaked in music. He’s Director of the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Studies Program at the University of Louisville School of Music, but right now his focus is on his upcoming concert of strictly Brazilian music,…
The Ben Folds balancing act
For many in my generation, “Whatever and Ever Amen” represented a careful balancing act in alternative. Here was an album that carried youthful angst with mellow instrumentation, while still managing to have some degree of emotional valance. The melancholic ballad “Bricks” and the sarcastic screeds in “Song for the Dumped” or “Battle of Who Could…
Plugged In (Jan. 28 – Feb. 3)
WED Jan 28th Brasserie Provence: Brian Curella Duo, Joey Thieman; 5 p.m. Diamond Pub (St. Matthews): Devereaux Trio Gerstle’s: Kimmet & Doug; 9 p.m. Gypsy’s Sports Bar: Kettle Creek Ramblers; 8 p.m. Jack Fry’s: Ray Johnson, Dave Wilson, Jenna Mattingly; 7 p.m. Jim Porters: Mixed Bag Wednesday From DJ’s to Country, Rock to Jazz, Comedy…
Video Tapeworm
This Week’s Twin Peeks SEX[ED]: THE MOVIE 2014; $24.95; UR A fun, funny and very enlightened doc on how we all got so screwed up. America’s first attempts at teaching each other about sex began in the early 1900s, though it wasn’t so much a social education as socially-acceptable misinformation. Since that day we really…
THEATER: Comedy unites Spanish, Greek and galactic stages
In a 2008 Washington Post interview, the Venezuelan playwright Gustavo Ott said, “Latin American theater is more open than American theater in its style. In our theater, it’s easy for us to do almost anything on the stage.” This season, both of Louisville’s Spanish language theater companies — Teatro Tercera Llamada and El Delirio Producciones…
BOOK: Former boy soldier and acclaimed author to speak at Collegiate School
Ishmael Beah spent years working on his memoir, “A Long Way Gone.” He describes his daily fight to survive, with his humanity intact, in a country devastated by war. The Sierra Leon Civil War, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, is notorious for its brutality. Children were forced on both sides to become soldiers, and…
Okay or Not?
Savvy restaurant patrons have heard of the practice of bringing your own bottle of wine to a restaurant and paying a “corkage” fee to have it poured and served for you and your guests. But some folks take things a hair too far in this area. Let’s play a game about dining out. A game…
Selma…My Response
We have willingly given up our power… I purposely waited until Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to view the movie “Selma.” I thought it would be appropriate on that day, after hosting the inspirational Hope Breakfast (sponsored by the Brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.) to honor Dr. King’s legacy and remember one of…
Freedom can be icky
Au nom du Père et du Fils et du Saint-Esprit, ainsi soit il. That is how almost every meal of my childhood began. My mom, who studied French in college, led us in the sign of the cross in French before every meal. That was followed by “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,…
My Idiot Brother
When reading the many submissions for Literary LEO 2015, in poetry, short and flash fiction, I was motivated to join in the fun — because that is what it is all about. Oh the places you will go… LEO It’s been six months since I took over LEO What a perfect fit for my life’s…
Inbox – January 28, 2015
LEO Weekly welcomes letters that are brief (350 words max) and thoughtful. ?Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to Inbox, 607 W. Main St., Suite 001, Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or email to leo@leoweekly.com. We may edit for length, grammar…
