poetry

this little hand in mine

Posted on by A. Long

In case I never get to tell you this

In case you forget who I was

In case we have a fight or stop speaking

Or you have questions

I have always loved you,

Not from the moment you were born or

When you threw up on my favorite shirt

But forever

From the inception of my existence

It was intrinsic that I would love you

Cradle

Hold you while you cried

Sing Marvin Gaye songs to put you back to sleep

To dream of how much we might look alike

And threaten your first date

To tell you that ma is the best person you will ever meet

Daddy always tries to help you navigate a world of bullshit and lies

In my short time I have failed to change it for you

So I have tried to change myself

I have been fallen been broken lied to lain with

Kicked down left lifted up cherished

I have seen beauty beautiful people ugly things history unfurl

Conspiracy and the truth get rinsed out in the wash

I have hurt people been hurt cried lied been found out abused

I like to think that I know some things

But the brave admit what they don’t know

Openly brazenly and without fear

Because there is no shame in not having all the answers

 

Learn to cook and laugh at yourself

Find someone who loves to be bored with you and go on an adventure

Know where you come from

Look to the moon for humility

Look in the mirror for strength

 

And just in case I am not there

When you leave for prom or

Learn how to ride a bike

In case I am not there for your next birthday or class trip

In case I am not there when you need me

 

Know that your little hand in mine altered my destiny

I love you more than

Peach cobbler collard greens and chinese chicken wings

Past all reason and cognizance

I’d hold on tight and die for you

Because that

Is just what big sisters do

 

For Nazir Samaira Rachel Rebecca Jazmin and any others after…

Per Fumum

Posted on by A. Long

My mother became an ornithologist

when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke

and fell at her feet. Soon she learned

why singers cage birds; it can take weeks

to memorize a melody — 

the first days lost as they mope

and warble a friendless note,

the same tone every animal memorizes

hours into breathing. It’s a note

a cologne would emit if the bottle was struck

while something mystical was aligned

with something even more mystical

but farther away. My father was an astronomer

for forty minutes in a row

the first time a bus took us so far

from streetlights he could point out constellations

that may or may not have been Draco,

Orion, Aquila, or Crux.

When they faded I resented the sun’s excess,

a combination of fires I couldn’t smell.

The first chemist was a perfumer

whose combinations, brushed

against pulse points, were unlocked

by quickening blood. From stolen perfumes

I concocted my personal toxin.

It was no more deadly than as much water

to any creature the size of a roach. I grew suspicious

of my plate and lighter Bunsen burner,

the tiny vials accumulating in my closet.

I was a chemist for months

before I learned the difference

between poisoned and drowned.

When my bed caught fire

it smelled like a garden.

 

–by Jamaal May

Spending The Morning Alone

Posted on by A. Long

watercolor

This morning someone spoke my name.

Sometimes I have trouble waking

I fall back to sleep

deep into dreaming

the weight of the voice shook me up, teeming

with a power

I have never known

I opened my eyes  to realize that

I

was alone

and so it goes

whenever I’m lost in a vortex that is the bed

a voice speaks inside my head

if I’m too heavy

it rolls me into the covers tightly

pushes the pillows over ever so slightly

& shoves the alarm right under my ear

just near enough to deafen

On occasion I’ll come face to face with a face

precariously perched on the wooden chair

from my dresser

eyes intent and steady

watching me breath, I guess

until I am startled into wakefulness

& scan the room

looking for the missing soul

that rippled my sleep

only to see once again

that I am alone

the sole person

in this home.

 

A Brief For The Defense

Posted on by A. Long

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

–by Jack Gilbert

When Something Happens

Posted on by A. Long

Sometimes, when you’re called a bastard
over a period, say,
of several centuries;
sometimes, when you’ve opened your brain
to a window in the sky,
become almost a bird for want of flying;
sometimes, when a child walking
in your eyes is shot,
feeling, somehow, what you wish to forget,
through all cities your stark sorrow moving
where the sun leaks hideously
its garbage and the garbage
rots in your own stuffed room
and no one
in all the world gives a damn,
are firing rockets, are
ramming the roof of Heaven, are
crowning glory with glory…
Sometimes something happens

and happens and happens
when your breathing shape is tired to death
of being told
how well it lives,
how decent stinking ghetto,
the milk skimmed off to show, to demonstrate
this vegetable darkness.
when you are cheated, when
even netted fish find more freedom
and the eyes of stuffed beasts,
the eyes that never shut, seem
to mock you with their stuffed look–
you lead your blind family
from darkness to darkness,
on C street on 5th Ave look for work,
move your beast where
the white god’s spit
and the El’s grey slug sparks along tracks
and cattle are butchered far from farms
and farm boys wonder
who you are how so many millions
stand, shaded, different.

Let one word be spoken; let
the sky jump under your fists, let
the sun go out, drenched in your tears,
no leaf be still,
but the generations of trees transmuted
by your found anger; let
pushcarts lose their geometric rims, the circles fall apart.
O God! Something
happenns in this new world prison,
when prisoners rise up!

–James A. Randall Jr.

1994

Posted on by A. Long

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself hard near my heart

you have your own story
you know about the fear the tears
the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breats
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life

–Lucille Clifton

Poems

Funeral Blues

Aside | Posted on by A. Long

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

jenniferhecker.com

jenniferhecker.com

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

–W. H. Auden