Some mornings, getting out of bed feels like carrying ten bags of cement. Other mornings, you float through space, watching your life pass by from a distance. You are struggling to dig your way out of a bottomless pit. The more you dig, the deeper you plummet. A crashing descent into a bottomless vacuum. You […]
Archive by Author
Sadness Is a Crowd | Tope Ogundare | Two Poems
The Shot each line on her face is a story of war, each crease tells of battles fought and lost, wounds brandished, hope taken captive. in her eyes sucked of tomorrow are orbs of dimmed light, its objects shadowy illusions. her mouth droops from the weight of sighs, from lamentations and dirges, from offering desperate […]
Unlabelled | Ishola Abdulwasiu Ayodele | Fiction
Crusade You’d imagined the possibility of being possessed by demons. But it didn’t make sense. You didn’t feel the presence of any alien energy in you. Your desires, your sexual tastes—they were all you. Once, you went to those crusades where miracles were promised and demons exorcised. The night was cold. You put on your […]
Chanting Fire | Emmanuel Esomnofu | Poetry
Inspired by Romeo Oriogun. * One day we’ll sit in a lightless bar and look into each other. Revolution is a song hungry folks don’t sing. We’ll chant fire and cry ice. Maybe you feel happy that a legion of pigeons are flying off your chest, towards a greener land that breeds peppers. _ Our […]
My Grandaddy Was a Gangsta | Gboyega Odubanjo | Two Poems
My Grandaddy Was a Gangsta his disciplining stick in one hand a bottle of Fanta in the other, my grandaddy was a gangsta. known from the west coast of Nigeria to North America cos he spread his seeds indiscriminate, like it was going out of fashion. tales say he descended from hills in gold chains […]
Redemption | Andrew Aondosoo Labe | Poetry
A Pastor says the devil landed here in ‘77. His broken legs can be seen in the twin-rivers. Three-eyed demons from the West Indies, And dark-skinned centaurs from everywhere, Welcomed the two-horned castaway. That was the beginning of our end, He said, and I trembled with fear. I begged him to pray for me. My […]
Home and Holes | Eric Atie | Fiction
THE DOCTOR says I’ve got a hole in my heart. I tell him that I am aware. I tell him that it is you who dug it in there. He sits opposite me, the doctor, a clean-shaven man with warm eyes that gather moist whenever he blinks. His eyes, they look like yours. He looks […]
Look | Amy Heydenrych | Poetry
Look how these men move through the earth, carelessly, eyes forward, shoved towards an urgent destination (though never feeling they have arrived). Look how closely the man stands his ground, hard-eyed, half-smiling, while the woman beneath him buckles, compromises, second-guesses her strength. In the most simple moments, the flow of the earth is revealed. Skip […]
I hold a doctorate in English from Duke University and recently joined the Marquette University English faculty as an Assistant Professor. I love teaching African fiction and contemporary British novels. Brittle Paper is the virtual space/station where I play and experiment with ideas on how to reinvent African fiction and literary culture.
