Mister Brown lives on the corners of
Trident Avenue & 4th Street.
His rickety walk matches the
pace of a snail.
Reverend Burnham says he can’t
be trusted with the church’s
money anymore.
Something about embezzlement
and buying dope.
I stand on the corner, waiting for
The Man to pick me up for work,
and he glides down his steps
like a ghost on a mission.
I keep my wallet close to me.
He waves, I smile.
I don’t say a word to him,
but I watch him as he tries
to figure out how to get
into his car.
The door swings open,
he pushes his disobedient
body inside — closes it.
I notice the gas cap hasn’t
been closed.
I flag him down, but he’s
up the street quicker than my
hands can flail.
He hits a tree.
Cops come.
Reverend Burnham too.
Said he fell asleep at
the wheel.
This is a call for submissions and your second challenge of this year. Young Minds of Medium — this is it! I am looking for work from the young writers here on Medium, ages 15–25. Submissions will be reviewed and posted on Mondays and Fridays during the first two weeks of May. I want to hear from you. I want to feel, connect with, and fall in love with the words you would like to share with the world. Currently, we are dealing with Coronavirus COVID-19, a global pandemic affecting hundreds of countries.
To say that a change is recognizable in everyone I know and love is an understatement. This particular challenge centers around what you’ve lost or miss most because of it.
Your theme: “What Do You Miss Most During This Pandemic?
What am I asking?
I am certain we all miss being able to meet and greet our friends and family members — to hug them, kiss them, and simply lay hands on them. Maybe you miss going to the movies? The bookstore? Having a fun-filled day in the park complete with a picnic or a game of basketball. Or, suppose you’d like to write about the loss of a loved one due to the virus or during this pandemic & your struggles with grieving because of it. What do you miss most? How has this pandemic changed you?
I am looking for:
Poetry
Micropoetry
Fiction (no more than 850 words)
Non-fiction (no more than 850 words)
And, your heart. ❤
•You will need to be a current user on Medium for this challenge. Request to be added as a writer by emailing me at acorneredgurl[at]gmail[dot]com with “Please Add Me” as the subject line/title. In the body of the email, please include a link to your Medium profile. For the young ones, ages 15–25 already contributing to ACG, please submit your work in draft-form directly to A Cornered Gurl for review, scheduling, and/or publishing. You can submit twice per week, your works will be published on Monday and Friday of that week.
Please have a suitable image for your work with notable credit to its source/artist (Please include the link!). You can find plenty of great images via Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. If you are the source for your image, please caption that.
Please subtitle your entries “Young Minds of Medium Missed Things Call” and tag your pieces with the following: “Growth” & “Pandemic.” CHALLENGE SUBMISSION BEGINS NOW!
The start date for publishing the YMOM pieces is Friday, May 01, 2020, and the end date is Monday, May 18, 2020.Other contributors to ACG, please, no worries. You can submit as you normally would to A Cornered Gurl and your work will be published as well, however, a total of six pieces will be published on Mondays and Fridays for all other writers, leaving the floor wide open for our young ones. I hope you will understand and accept this.
*Please remember that A Cornered Gurl is a read-for-all community and there will be no metered paywall or locked pieces published here.
Thank you.
And now, music from Mr. Billy Joel: We Didn’t Start The Fire
Lisa Senters is a writer I’ve been reading on Medium for a few years so when the time came for her to be added as a contributor for A Cornered Gurl, I was overwhelmed with excitement. I love what she does with words–how she can forge simple connections with them by the way she places them. She is a words-worker who doesn’t shy away from being vulnerable and sharing raw and heavy work with us. The poem that lands her this feature is the aptly titled, “Don’t wait to speak it.” I think you’ll understand why sharing this is important when you read it.
QUINTESSENCE: A Literary Magazine of Featured Medium Writers
Quintessence: Issue #1, Spring 2020|Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
“Quintessence” is a literary magazine to be published yearly in the Spring. The writers you see featured in this literary magazine are contributors to A Cornered Gurl and have been faithful in their support, encouragement of others, and submitting strong and poignant work to be read freely on the platform. This is the first issue.
I am fighting back a few tears at this moment because what I envisioned for A Cornered Gurl is finally here … A Cornered Gurl Presents QUINTESSENCE: A Literary Magazine of Featured Medium Writers is published and ready for your purchase, perusal, and praise. We will take your constructive criticism and pointers too, as we intend to grow each year. I always knew I wanted to start a literary magazine, however, one to be shared annually. It is not lengthy and does not include more than fifteen writers. I knew it would not be an anthology or a journal. I plan on keeping the published writers in each issue to a minimum of around sixteen to eighteen.
In this first issue, there are fifteen writers, including myself. The magazine has three sections: Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry. It is an “8 X 11” full-color and glossy print layout, consisting of 42 pages. It includes four of my original photography prints as the images accompanying the beginning of each section.
We have worked incredibly hard on this as we wanted to give our readers something special.
Currently, Quintessence is published through Lulu and is awaiting possible distribution to Amazon,Barnes & Noble, and other online notable sellers. The current price is $17.00 (USD) for a paperback which is at the discounted rate of 15%. It will remain $17.00 for three weeks in paperback form. After that three-week period, it will revert back to its normal price of $20.00 (USD) per copy.
Because this is the first issue and we want the word to get out as widely as it possibly can, I have also included an e-book copy at $6.50 (USD). However, with this format, you do not get the full aesthetics of the beauty of this magazine. My copy came this morning and I have held it so much that if the magazine were a person, I am sure it’d demand that I unhand it.
Below, you will find links to both the paperback form and e-book (to be sold only on Lulu) form of Quintessence. Now, that I have cried a few tears and seem to be a little overwhelmed with happiness, I want to thank this issue’s contributors:
Thank you to each of our readers, supporters, family, and friends and of course, our community here on Medium. Without all of you, our growth and this magazine, would not be possible.
Addendum: I have created a direct link to Quintessence and also if you go to the site directly as opposed to viewing from the Reader. If you look to your right, directly under my “gravatar” is the tab and image for Quintessence which will also take you directly to its page. It is also populated as an additional page via the navigation bar.
Lita Tiara joinedA Cornered Gurl recently and is now apart of our Young Minds of Medium community. At only nineteen years of age, Lita strips down to bare bones and shows us what it feels like to grow from the pain of past events. She also shows us what it is to love in the time of heartache. This week’s feature is a prose piece by the young one entitled: To Those Whose Are No Longer Near. Please, encourage her heart, beautiful people.
To Those Who Are No Longer Near
A love letter to those who left. We deserve a proper goodbye.
It was 2:47 am in the blatant morning when despondency knocked on my door, intruding my weariness. I couldn’t say that it was what I expected to keep me company, yet somehow it has taken control over my state. I am now, restless.
For some unknown reason, the gleaming cold of the lonely night hugged me from behind and harrowed my aching back. I crave to delete every thought of you as fast as how your feelings swiftly evaded from my course.
I feel a constant pressure to remove myself from every known possible equation which would resolve in me and you.
A few seconds after, my head was swarmed with the scrumptious smell of the self-made brunch that you made me many months ago. How thoughtful of you back then for remembering how I like my eggs: scrambled and salty. My mind was succumbed with joy from every bite, knowing that they were made with pure intentions to relieve someone’s hunger.
Silly me for thinking that we would last until our hair shows no other color than ivory, the color of your favorite sheets that your younger self said this would suit best the childish projection of yours — how your future home would look like when you’re older.
Dews of my reasoning wanders off to God knows where when things could no longer possibly be. It yearns to wander to innumerable possibilities of a much more euphoric version of us, yet it wouldn’t bow to any boundaries which would remove me from your suffocating grip — removing every self-pleasing notion your words have projected, “I’m setting you free”.
The minutes refuse to stop rolling into hours, hours which approach the definite dawn yet, I’m sitting in the corner of my room filled with traces of where you used to be.
Crouching, I was, with my face buried between my knees — trying to let go of your soothing comfort from my body as fast as how you threw myself out from every known possible corner of your world.
I hoard each word you spat out that day:
I don’t think things can go back to the way it used to be between me and you.
They’ve consumed me raw fearlessly, without the slightest care. I could feel how frozen your heart was at the time, as I came face-to-face with the gnashing teeth of what I reckon those words would look like in the flesh. I lost the battle.
I don’t want to deal with you anymore.
The familiarity of what best describe who I am was nowhere to be found. They are not in the places where I would expect them to be — believe me I’ve looked. I’ve grown numb to the things that are holy.
It has now been weeks and I’m not weak.
I don’t want to ease myself into the pain anymore. Was I a better person when I was with you or vice versa, we might never know.
Yet it has come to my realization that we are now both in the place where we should be: where we won’t cry anymore.
This is the goodbye that I didn’t have the chance to say—
“Lacy! Gimme that mud bucket! Is Sky over there? Is it spitting out mud?! We need more mud for these pies!”
Lacy looks towards her bossy twin, tilts her head, and casually skips over to Missy with Sky in the muddy bucket. They have mud pies to make.
“Here! You ain’t gotta be all direct about things, Missy. I could’ve heard you all the way down the Chattahoochee River. You need to learn how to talk to people. Didn’t Mama tell you that? Didn’t Aunt May?”
Lacy, the quiet one, usually the one to smooth things over when things got out of control, has been frustrated with her twin sister for a few days. This one event lit an already fiery flame within her. She was tired of Missy and someone had to let her know. Totty follows close by. She wants to see what her two big sisters have brewing.
“All’s I said was to bring the bucket over and look after Sky too. That was a great big ole piece we pulled from behind Ms. Ruby’s shed. I don’t want us to lose it.”
“You oughta go’on and apologize, Missy. Don’t be so bossy all the time. It ain’t ladylike.”
Missy sucks her teeth, rolls her eyes, and blows out a raspy breath. Lacy stands her ground. Totty reaches for her sister’s hand and squeezes it. They both watch Missy struggle to make amends — to admit wrong.
“Okay, Lacy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so demandin’. I was excited. Can you forgive me?”
Lacy looks at Missy, searches her eyes for truth, and finds it. She accepts her sister’s apology. It is pie-making time.
“Okay, I accept it. Just — you mind your manners and don’t let it happen again or me and Totty’ll go right on home.”
The girls scoop mud up by the handful, plop it into three buckets, then spread the contents in three pans. Each lump is layered atop the other and within minutes, an ultimate mud pie is made. Totty jumps at the opportunity to stick her fingers in the gooey dirt, then slaps it across her face.
“TOTTY! Whatchudoin’?!” They both scream at their toddler sister, reprimanding her for being curious. “YOU ALMOST ATE SKY! That’s not for you to eat, Totty. It’s for us to build muddy sky pies with.”
Totty shrugs her shoulders. She shakes the mud at her fingers sending muddy bits flying into the air. The sky changes color. What was once a sinner’s yellow is now a saint’s orange. It is getting late.
“We better get movin’,” Missy exclaims.
“Right. Mama will have our hides if we don’t beat the crickets’ song and Ms. Ruby’s porch light.”
The three of them run as fast as they can, buckets of muddy sky piled upon each other, dirty clothes and pruned fingertips are signs of a good time.
The night is tailing them and Sky fades to black the moment their shoes meet the front door.
A Cornered Gurl 
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