Darrell Curtis

A Place in the Line

There is a certain kind of work that doesn’t ask to be noticed. No ribbon cutting. No podium. No name on a building. Just a weekday morning, a line of cars, and somebody trying to figure out how to make groceries last a little longer than they should. You show up, you do your part,ContinueContinue reading “A Place in the Line”

Writing Like You Talk — And Meaning It

I came late to the em dash. Embarrassingly late, really… Like a good restaurant that’s been there all along, right down the street, and you just kept driving past. For most of my writing life, I treated punctuation like traffic signals. Period: stop. Comma: slow down. Semicolon: pause, but stay with me. Colon: something formalContinueContinue reading “Writing Like You Talk — And Meaning It”

Evening Light on the Levee

My truck, Mississippi River twilight, and Venus rising in the west. Some photographs are sharp. Others, like memories, are blurry. This one I snapped at random: the shadowy FJ silhouetted against a twilight sky, Venus hanging steady above. My old FJ Cruiser rested along the Mississippi River levee at Lone Oak Cemetery, back window openContinueContinue reading “Evening Light on the Levee”

When Weakness Becomes the Point

[Edited on March 10, 2026 for theological clarity. See below in the body of the text] A note: This piece followed on the heels of writing a cathartic exercise in pointing fingers at the cultural moment. Somewhere in the middle of that one, it occurred to me that while one finger was aimed outward, threeContinueContinue reading “When Weakness Becomes the Point”

Dark Room, Yellow Light: How “Wrecking Ball” Remade Emmylou Harris

I came across the Wrecking Ball CD in the late 1990s, pulling it from the racks at the Vernon Parish Public Library in Central Louisiana. The cover alone — a high-contrast black-and-white close-up of Emmylou’s face blurred and streaked as though dissolving into shadow or motion, pierced by a single vivid yellow glow that cuts through theContinueContinue reading “Dark Room, Yellow Light: How “Wrecking Ball” Remade Emmylou Harris”