Poems

On The Mountain

Posted on by A. Long

Go tell it on the mountain

say her name and sing her praises

go tell it

run tell dat

Grandma’s hands are no longer wringing the cloth that rinses

Go tell that she lies in a sepulchre sleeping

run out to the streets, tear up the tissue sheets

and pull the wool back from their eyes

She is no longer with us

Go tell it on the mountain

because eyes will weep hearts spill like milk across her clean table

a wave of emotion so massive that it will consume buildings and the mountains we shout from

Go tell the masses that she has gone home

Shout until you’re hoarse and then hoarsely sing until you can no longer speak,

and the vibrations slow into silence for the dead,

cry for me

for all the times you didn’t get to see her or call

for every happy memory

for every half told story that she never finished

Go tell it on the mountain

Stop time, just for a minute.

Let it soak in that she’s gone.

By Ariama C. Long, RIP Clorene Elizabeth Long 7/6/21

On Behalf of America’s Native Sons

Posted on by A. Long

“Feeling the capacity to be,

to live,

to act,

to pour out the spirit of their souls into concrete and objective form with a high fervor born of their racial characteristics,

they glide through our complex civilization like wailing ghosts;

they spin like fiery planets lost from their orbits;

they wither and die like trees ripped from native soil.”

— excerpt from Book Three: Fate of Native Son by Richard Wright, 1940

Speak

Posted on by A. Long

Black women’s faces are so expressive because we have

always been perceived to be in the position of servants

meant to bow politely

and with aggressive humility

enjoy giving service to the man or woman above us

She’s not sassy because she wants to be

but because she has to be.

Because the sheer absurdity of other people’s realities encroaching on her ability to live freely necessitates comment even if she is not allowed to speak.

–A. Long

To Anonymous…

Posted on by A. Long

The larger picture is this: Brooklyn is a bitch built on turmoil

blood, black and white, has steeped into its foundation

that’s the legacy we fight over 

and churn the butter to claim

when you from here

I will always do better 

but I giggle through your attempt at trying to tell me my history

my grandfather was a blockbuster

blacktaxed

he stood on our porch with a shotgun in hand 

as they scribbled nigger across his domain

it was as real as the bricks and mortar I reside in my mixed neighborhood

seeing as how that wasn’t the point though. let me stay on message

thanks for reading, for being a critic

for caring enough about the consequences of your words and mine to blot out your name so I can impartially give you these facts

shoutout to the first of firsts and to dissenters in the ranks

The Lynching

Posted on by A. Long

His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the cruelest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim)
Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;
And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

By Claude McKay, 1922

The Press

Posted on by A. Long

Hail the press, sword-arm of justice

once chosen for its resistance but the existence of fake news is a mass misconception because there has always been the fake and the real

since inception.

The black journalist, duplicitous in nature, was shut out of newsrooms

strung up by their necks 

literature spread that let the long-arm of the law snatch boys from their cribs

who fit the profile

The panther party persisted 

the so called Freedom Messengers

inciting revolutions with pens and passion

pantherp

What did the press and the president say of them then

the fake, the real. The red or the blue pill

John Henry’s Woman

Posted on by A. Long

my daddy’s name was john henry

my moms name was polly ann

he never sold crack 

but was a hard workin man who laid track in the subways

bent back like his people 

and when he died from all that 

he gave ma his legendary hammer

she had a slammer that was mean 

and took no shit from men, white brown or black

weary, she 

me and your daddy built this city

so you wouldn’t have to

now take this hammer 

and show’ em what you can do

 

 

Morning Song

Posted on by A. Long 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.  The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

–By Sylvia Plath