“It’s becoming too dangerous,” Laila said with a pardonable expression of fear. For a minute she sat stone silent, regal in a blue and orange, polka-dotted ankara gown, coffee steaming off the mug in her hands. She took a long draught of the liquid, eyes staring over the rim at her daughter. “We are […]
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Night and Again | Salvy Snr | Fiction
* The nights are gathering, quickly, and you’ve been sitting on this silent bench in the front yard concrete patio for hours, eyes half shut with measured grief, waiting. You have your oversized Jelabia on. No, not the slightly pink one. That one reminds you of his imperfect lips, with an everlasting gloss and […]
Semicolon | Azeeza Adeowu | Fiction
Whenever I see a semicolon while reading a book, I remember Hadiza. I remember her eyes and her mind, her wrist and her voice, and I remember I would never consider reading a book had I not met her. It was 14 months ago, at Ace Research Laboratory in Ibadan where I was to […]
Three Studies | Yannick Marshall | Poetry
Study 1: Cheek Dune. Collapse of silt into moonlessness. Caravan of silt and silt-covered men you turn your face. Retrieve your forearm from the darkened lamp string. Bedroom-dark plants his stick into your torso, you turn to me. Adjust. Face the ceiling. Your face sloping into blue desert, pocked with the footsteps of water-starved […]
Felaland | Pei Koroye | Fiction
you want to know if i fucked him, don’t you? don’t lie, i know what you journalist types are like—i invite you into my house, i give you water, cool water, which is rare around here, a real commodity, and all you want to ask me is if i fucked the King, if i […]
Space | Jonathan Durunguma | Fiction
I saw a worn-out rubber slipper. It looked like Salim’s. I wondered what he was doing there. I also saw Fa’iqah’s. I caught myself smiling as I pushed open the creaking plank door. I opened to see Fa’iqah crying, head bent. “Forgive me,” she said. There was a loud bang on the door. Just […]
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