short stories

To Start Again

Posted on by A. Long

It’s hard to write anymore. All my truths have changed. Everything I called my own, left. Everything I thought I knew, I forgot. I can’t write good stories. But, maybe I never did.

Once I had conviction in my own abilities, and somewhere along the line it was smothered. Right down to the last dying ember. That little baby suffered down there waiting for me. You think one would notice a heart shrinking, but you don’t. Not until it stops beating.

Mine did. It stopped, quit, rolled over to play dead; and quite sharply, in it’s last act of defiance, took my entire life with it.

I poked at the pen and paper on my desk like a kid poking at soaked ashen sticks with a twig. I wanted it to live. My everything hurt and my first action was to write away the pain. To put it in words, lock it in my cavernous notebook with the rest. I couldn’t.

I tried unsuccessfully to rekindle my beloved but the void was too far gone. In my desperation, I tried to fill it with you. Thoughts of you. Sounds, memories, substitutions.

We learn to live in moments of great disappointment I guess. I grieved for  652 days, 12 hours, and  42 minutes before it came back. I had had nightmares, panic attacks, addictions, and regrets. I was broken, and you weren’t helping anymore. You were the problem, growing on me like a cancerous sore. I hated you, myself, the world, and everything in it. So I gave up to move on to newer things. I took up cooking, running, rock collecting to stay occupied, even tweeted online. Drank a lil’ bit. Talked to strangers. Thought about stepping in front of a car. I starved, then gorged, let you back in, stressed, made money, paid bills, and lost you. Got into a fist fight or two and broke a bone or two. Took way too many pain killers. Slept around. Slept alone. Sniffled once, or twice, or maybe cried in absolute depression for nights on end.

And then I did the unthinkable…

I picked up a notebook

searched for a pen

and started to write again.

To My First Love

Posted on by A. Long

Hello Brooklyn,

The first time it hit me that I was in love with you B, thought it was bugged how you had me. Talked about you to my friends, acquaintances, co workers constantly, like let me introduce you to this dude I knew. Come through, I’ve got someone I want to show you. It was unbelievable, that new shit. Name on my tongue, scribbling shit cross my notebook since May 23rd, birth. My foretold, my first.

Fresh, like grade school when I stumbled through the phonics of my parents language. Clumsy, children running with ice cream cones, elated by the frozen joy they’ve been sold and the elusive notion that it will all be gone soon. Ice on a steaming stove, love was dripping off my chin, Brooklyn. My style was molded to my speech in the exact shape that you picked out for me. You taught me how to think, and I didn’t mind because I trusted you mind and soul. I walked through the streets bigging you up to everyone I knew, defending your slandered name, until you took a swing and my face was your aim.

Safe to say I had to go, yet I thought without a doubt that you loved me. Who was going to take me in? This chick with an accent and attitude accentuated to suit you. This chick with secrets that sometimes came unglued at just the wrong moments.

My love laid dormant while I bounced around    from house to house  until he caught me. You know Poetry wasn’t just an affair he was my passion. I love him unconditionally because I know he’d never leave me.

Days spent after school when I should’ve been doing homework, I wrote him. Notes, letters, words, verbs, similes laid sweetly next to metaphors and phrases, quotes, scribbles, and rants. Guess he had me open. I’d wake up at 3 am with his voice in my ear, touching each one of my thoughts until they strapped suicide bombs to their chests and explode with new ideas and ways for me to love him.

We were so real that I’m sorry Brooklyn but that first thing didn’t appeal. We were inseparable. I couldn’t get enough, like platanos and collard greens.

I’ll always miss you, but

He listened to me.

Cuddled up to my natural kush, I wanted to be with him more than anything

fated to be

like a Vandross rift

like coolaid sugar stains lingering on my smiling lips

I thanked God for this poetical gift and a green notebook to hold my words down whenever inspiration kicks up.

Don’t misunderstand one day I will come back, because the voice I found with you helped stumble every word I ever wrote into existence. There is more to be done where I am. I can’t abandon him.

Just know you are here with me in the things I carry.

Love,

The Poet

 

 

Entering

Posted on by A. Long


So in walks this annoying ice cream covered child in messed up clothes and odd pig-tails. I caught a laugh in my throat as I looked at her, unable to figure out if she would be a future problem. It’s not like I didn’t like kids, I in fact had one of my own already, a girl too actually. But there was something about this misfit that pressed into a shape of a nice kid. Whatever it was, I didn’t know about it. She stood in the middle of my old carpet, and sized up the room. The girl was definitely a miniature of her mother, how I imagine she looked and acted when she was the same age. Same midnight skin, same neck, same face shape and pudgy lips. That foreboding realization didn’t help the feeling that this kid was looking at me as if we were eye-level. Short stuff was really leaning into her stare then she cracked a wicked smile and started rolling her dark-chocolaty self all over the floor.

This little

ass

kid.

From a far some things look good, but up close there’s so much, too much almost. Her mother swimming and flitting back and forth, in front of my door appeared so differently from right now. Right now it was real, and they were entering. Okay, so maybe this space isn’t mine but it’s more mine than theirs; a pitfall of a home where I could embrace a ‘dead-wall reverie’ when everyone moved onto other things in their lives. They all move and flow over and around me like I am a rock left in the stream. They crossed the threshold to become real figures standing on the carpet that my daughter’s mother bought, staring at me.

Her mom came in chastising her for being a brat and went off on a spiel about her not understanding how she got this way. Great now there’s dark stains and waffle crumbs deep in my carpet. She stood up and muttered something to her mother in response then jumped on the couch, looking for a remote I assume so that she could watch my TV. Her mom crossed over to the window and threw open the shades, spilling unwonted and piercing light into the darkness of my living room. I could see my old carpet in its sad condition, stomped on, walked on, left, and a lonely centerpiece for the cavernous room that had little decoration now.

It used to look like something I wanted when she first bought it for us. “Something needs to be on the floor so that she doesn’t hurt herself while she’s playing,” she used to say.

I felt cold and hungry all of a sudden, so I swallowed my suspicion and let it get lost in the cavern under my heart.

She had brought McDonald’s with her for dinner. There we were, one big happy, sucking back manufactured goodness. I turned on a comedy just to lighten my mood, but it ended up turning my stomach like the cheese on my hamburger. Bouncy over here didn’t like Eddie Murphy movies and her mom made some off-collar joke about everything Murphy being stupid. They wanted to put on South Park. I caged a strong urge to grace her neck with my fist. In what world, is letting a 3 or 4 yr old watch South Park a good idea?

I guess that was the beginning of the end. I never had a woman bring all of this out of me. All the other women in my life were normal. I slowly reclined on my carpet, slipping into recluse and rage with my eyes open, and let the kid watch whatever she wanted to.

They Call Her

Posted on by A. Long

In the dead of night, when mischief meets the crux of infamy, she attempts to break into her own house. Brown, cat-like. Jag lives on the second floor of a brownstone down the street from a festering middle school and project development. She was never allowed to visit. Her mom, has inconveniently forgotten the keys again. No matter.

I am warrior, superman scaling the steps in a single bound, and carefully hopping over the railing, to dangle off the side of the building. Maybe, Spider’s better. Spider’s building, doors, and windows have reinforced iron black bars, except, for the middle window in her apartment missing a few to accommodate the air conditioner. But, in winter, it’s just an opportunity. She loops her paws around Brooklyn bars, swinging to the middle window.

Her mom’s pulse quickens from the ground. Sometimes, she thought, child you astound me. You are all at once brave and dumb. Something and nothing like me. Who will you be?

Spider unlatches the window and slithers in, then bursts from within the gate with a glowing smile of accomplishment. She is eight.

I wish I could freeze them, but it’s not up to me. She needs to make her story, her mom needs to watch her grow. My narration can’t stop the story, can not prevent her losing happiness or the willingness to climb. Can not predict her falling into a man’s bed or visiting the projects with wide eyes. I can’t stop Cat’s stumble or rise. Can not give you answers that language hasn’t solved yet.

I exist in the shade of her existence, documenting. Wishing I had answers for her confusion so she didn’t hurt. God, I hear her bleeding heart needing to be loved, clamoring  around in brown skin that doesn’t always fit.

Girl, if you hear me, this is not all there is. It gets better.

 

Knuckles and Knees: Part Two

Posted on by A. Long

images (18)I fought a door once.

My hands bled for all of five minutes.

I fought a man that same day, and they didn’t feel a thing. The scabs were more interesting to look at. They made my knuckles bulge and harder than before.

Darker too.

Now my knuckles match my knees.

Books $4 Sale

Posted on by A. Long

Books for sale!chicagodefender

Won’t anyone buy black books for sale!

Come on now people, I’m just a homely poet with books for sale. I’m standing on this corner shouting out a dream, won’t you hear me? I’ve been in the bookstores, soon to be absolute. Might as well cut your losses and buy from me. Nothing in here but fancy decorum and inviting Starbucks sweets, coffees, and treats to dampen your palette while you read. But, needs all that extra when soon the sounds of crisp pages flipping will be replaced by e-note books clicking. Yes folks soon the only sounds you’ll hear are the slow screech of a printing press meeting its demise as newspapers and text give way to convenience. Technology will definitely be on the rise but there is still time!

Come on mister, listen, don’t go in. Beyond those doors is nothing but a heated space for people bumming through books, looking for their next fix, perusing the classics section like looking for loose change in couch cushions. Buying books to dangle on their shelves, framed archaic masterpieces.

If it means that much to you go to the library, it’s cheaper for the consumer. A three ring circus of literature attended by masked and costumed book jugglers with a 5 cent cover charge for the customer. Come see the mastery of tricks never performed before! In town a few nights only featuring an all-star lineup of authors and poets, death0-defying leaps into symbolism and motif threaded through sharp waves of similes and metaphor. That’s what you really yearn for. Go quick before it’s no more than a hollowed tent, a scraped out cantaloupe shell, a discarded and disregarded community center left for demolition. Save the libraries!

old-bookLady, lady wait. Hear this! Haven’t you noticed the separation, the nicely parted Negro sections, labeled African American literature or urban fiction? Why the separation?

Come on guys, pay attention, these matters must needs some clarification, verification for that spark of truth gestating in the back of your mind. Decline what they feed you in search for better food.

But… while you searching, my book’s on sale $4 for 2.

He Said

Posted on by A. Long

He said I am the Anti-Christ, as a smile slipped its way across his face. images (4)

The pupil of his eyes twitched and danced hastily anxious to inflict the commands cooking in his mind. I part my lips to stop time to listen, flex my muscles to bend walls around my will be done he whispered as he hugged me almost lovingly. Mark a new beginning in the sands of society. Tie a broom to the necks of the unfaithful to sweep away the steps of the unworthy. He paced the room beaming with the brilliance of his plans holding the world’s fate like a freshly peeled orange in the palm of his hands, and in panicked breaths I could smell the citrus scented death. But, my face was placid and unimpressed by this man, who not too long ago used to grasp my hand.

Now he’s moved to the doorway triumph in his stride, a lion’s pride, a devil hides. Raises his arms and proclaims himself king. And I his daughter as future queen. I stare at his imagined victory over our little hallway, disheartened laughing at the notion of crazy. Just then he jumps forward wrestling with the world’s shadow, mumbling curses as he punches the plaster while quoting something that sounds like what satanic verses aught to. Accustomed and unafraid I exist only as a witness to the effects of cell bars and failed dreams, to un-addressed depression and loneliness that prefers the company of a bottle, to unabashed character flaws when Daddy should have been hero. He has won the battle, cheering excitedly standing firmly the savior. The head of anarchy singing loudly louder until he’s screaming shaking the roots of our building but he is a human being.

From the base of my soul I will smile because he’s smiling. There have been days when the light I see now was a smashed candle on the canvas above his chin wax and wick mixed into the hate and bitterness. From the core of my being I will swallow hard & laugh with his laughter at the powers that we will have as the Anti Christ and partner because I love my father albeit his mind doesn’t have all the chapters. Gladly charter my sanity for him, not to sanction his actions but because I understand it is hard to walk down the road as a large black man. Constant surveillance will make you consider God’s eyes less and less, make you wonder, should I answer the approaching officer or just nod my head yes. Yes I know I fit the profile. Through the procedure of cuffing gruff hands that controlled the sands of time are the ones that would firmly clasp mine, reading Miranda I trace memories along the lifelines of his palms.

They never hurt me.

Placed behind his double wide back. Maybe beat mercilessly the wooden face of a board, the weighted burden of anger heavy eradicated as knuckle met door. Wait, you have a self proclaimed king in your custody. He may have hid the broken bottles of his pride and shattered his relationship with God but I still need him to be the boulder in a world that rattles endlessly. Give me a chance at stability. Enough women already suffer from men coming in and out of their lives constantly.

images (5) This story unfortunately has no ending

Just the unknown future of a world that reduces its fathers to shambles

How can he help raise children when a broken soul just produces a broken one?

 

Mind.Body.Soul. Struggle

Posted on by A. Long

Am I the sinner or the preacher, student or the teacher, the lover or indifferent?Image

I thought, dug deep into the trenches, the cold globes of earth shifting and settling into my clothes. Wait. I’m starting to see a shape in the distance about three clicks away. I cant make them out just yet, but through the mists, ugly and black, they angrily jab at this writer’s sleep and disturb my mind’s peace. Oh, so you thought you were the thought that could just creep up on me, failing to see that my understanding runs deep, catacombed under the bone, so to speak, since violators were liable to get shot. Someone from far off in the trenches orders me to lay off my defenses.

 

But sir, the enemy is advancing, this is no time for peace!

We pushed then. Through the fields of provoked war to apprehend the targets caught dead in our sights like Osama’s head as it turned to meet the wrong end of an U.S barrel. Couldn’t tell you why I rushed in, I guess for the first time I just wasn’t thinking but the bullets kept flying. One doubled over as the left flank moved around the perimeter. Surrounded and boxed-in, one feel to his knees and began to plead. The last one standing had courage and came towards our heavily armed borders, hands high in surrender as I tapped the trigger ready to fire.

Don’t shoot, she says, I am love, offering my dignity and pride, and my life.

She closed her eyes then and shouted,

Now choose.