D Jay Collins
Writer, Thinker, Author
I was one of those kids that read everything! The signs we passed in the car, books given for birthdays, and even the TV Guide (we used to have those back in the day). I also started writing early on with poems to cute girls, essays for school that were a lot more than what was expected, and just about things that happened in my daily life.
As a young adult, I was even part of the poetry renaissance in Chicago as a regular performer at Spice’s Jazz Bar on Monday nights which included a fellow poet and friend, Theodore Witcher, writer/director of “love jones”. A movie that inspired current and future poets across the country. Eventually, the owners of Spice’s retired and closed shop and while others continued writing and performing, I was busy managing various businesses and not making any time to be creative.
For the last decade, I realized I missed that feeling of inspiration, of putting words on the page, and sharing them with a receptive audience. Before “The Baker’s Dozen”, my first fictional short story, I had never created characters from scratch and surprised myself at the wondrous feeling it gave me. I hope you enjoy this one and I aspire to have many more for you as well.
The Baker’s Dozen
Among the mosaic of faded faces of small children with phone numbers on tiny strips of paper like jagged teeth was a flyer for “Revival Sundays!” It was an odd sentiment, here, in this place where hope had come to die. This waystation for the pleas and cries of parents on their knees in anguish.…
Waiting on the message…
The beginning of Hip-Hop for me was listening to a pre-release of The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight because my step-father was a DJ. I’m from the Chi but was living in Vicksburg, MS for a year, and when I moved back, I knew the song word for word. I got a lil’ street-cred for that.…
A Purple Piece
There is an expression…”My heart is full”. Many think they are using this in the right way. I think it is sad, selfish, and true of someone who hasn’t lived long enough or known true love, pain, or loss. When you Love someone, you know it because it feels like they take a part of…
D Jay Collins 