We would like to announce that the G will start publishing fiction in our Broken Spine section. We would our fam to start the day with coffee and a little bit of fiction to get ya thinkin'. 

Guidelines? 

NO more that 1,000 words. YOU edit! We don't got no copyeditor yet, so clean up after yourself. 

We take poetry too! 

Send that shit to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Our first entry: 

"Long Nights and Short Mornings"

crystal put her number in my pocket. i wouldn't find until the next day. that night i was crammed up in some beat ass bar. the bartender asked me for an order, and i told her to surprise me. i don't think she surprised me, but she almost killed me. the guy next to me sells loans and money. it is a funny concept for me to grasp. he thinks he helps people. don't we all. he hands me a card, buys me a drink and heads for the door. two scotch didn't seem like nearly enough to drink in a place like this. maybe he felt the vibe. it was maryland, afterall, and he was black. i don't think it's cool yet, not here anyway. but im cool. im the color and it shows. i have jokes and laughs and smiles and cigarettes.

round two was clear, speckled with gold. who needs an adventure when i got a drink? my newset conquest is against myself, my partner for the night agreed. we toasted, down the hatch. he spoke of tiny trgedies, the ones i've heard a million times before. he had a story about a baby. he loved her. his first child. she lived with her mother. he loved her too. but he spend a lot of time in the wrong places, and they couldn't accept that. it's easier to swallow a drink than your pride. but he loved her.

i asked the bar tender for a cigarette. for a place like this she still had a pretty girls smile. she handed me a menthol, and it was a good thing too. she was probably a pretty girl, but no one ever told her that, and she hadn't enough sense to listen to herself, or maybe she just had a shitty mirror. either way, she was getting a tip from me, and that was all. i came here looking for something pretty and easy. i'd get it, or at least it got me.

she was tough. the kind of girl who always thought of me as a cute kid, but soft. the kind who thought that people with pretty faces didn't have to see any ugly things, didn't do any ugly things, and never had any ugly things happen to them. she was tough. her friend was tough, too, but quiet, which meant she wasn't as tough. this was round three. it was a kiss. but how can it be called a kiss? a kiss is something that happens when it happens. no. this was a heavily strategized manuever. this was a two hours in front of the mirror, 1 hour in the closet 20 minutes on the phone and a lifetime later. it was a bottle of wine, a bottle of tremens, 3 surprises and some gold. it was sloppy, sexist and half unconscious. it wasn't a kiss.

the party moved out the door. that's when the lights went out, but this is what i remember: i walked up and down, in and out. the time passed like two strangers meeting head on in a crowded city sidewalk. hours like minutes, and minutes like hours. the steps seemed easy and the words were cheap, and i was rich. we talked of fears and angers, but we did not own any of these things on our own. they belonged to strangers we met in the night. our powers strengthened. we ran as fast as jesse owens, and jumped as high as him too. our bodies moved the way we asked them to move, and we knew we could ask them anything, and anything would be done. we were in complete control.

i woke up in the back of a car. when i opened the door the alarm went off. i left the door open and walked away. the sky was bright, the air was cold, my pants were wet. their was panic, confusion and fear. in wwii men often felt like this, but for better reason. i ran, up a hill and left my hat behind, casualty of my foolish squalor.

i got home, shut my door, but i felt no relief. the walk up that hill i kept telling myself id be okay when i opened the door to my room and took refuge beneath my covers, but the fear rose and rose the whole feverish walk home. the fury hightened as i stepped out of the pants i wore, feeling like i was about to reveal some sort of hideous scar, but nothing. i thought of her, the real her, the one i loved, who loved me. you can spend a whole night forgetting, only waking up to remember.

as the liquid came up my pipes and out my mouth it soaked into the wood floor. it'll akways be there, as long as the wood is a floor, and when it is thrown away, or forgotten it'll still be saturated with me. i tried piecing my night together, but the dreaded darkness had over taken me the night before. the possibilities were endless. i could have murdered man in cold blood, the cops could be on there way to my room as i lay thinking, but i wasn't looking for blood, at least not blood of that kind. my mouth filled with water again, and i leaned my head over to add some more of me to the floor. a piece of paper dropped out of my shirt. there was a a number, and a name, crystal.