when god runs out of money (how, no one says) once a week, these days, we come to where the pumpkins bob and the lake flies drop. my father’s widows, long-necked from greening free markets, rounding the stopped doors, sowing selves into cupped hands. my father’s daughters, easily bred on weather-worn benches, bidding the slow […]
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We Need To Talk | Muriel Adhiambo | Fiction
IT WAS A warm, humid night in the lakeside city of Kisumu. Under a starless sky, the women, seated on an assortment of plastic chairs, sang hymns. Between them and what had two days ago been a grass-thatched mud hut stood a decade-old mango tree. The hut had undergone a hurried transmutation overnight, and in […]
The Hour of Judgment | Edith Knight Magak | Fiction
THE HOUR OF judgment has come upon me, and my hope for redemption is pegged on a needle, sorcery, and a razor blade. If all fail—no, I will not think of that possibility. “Adala, Adala, look, the stool of loyalty is here.” Nyanaga’s excited voice breaks into my thoughts, and I watch passively as my […]
This Country’s Women | Three Poems by Kyle Malanda
This Country’s Women To survive, the women in my country hide secrets beneath breasts, at the curve of spine, between each hip: the first places shame ever licked us. Tucked at the corners of our wrappers bank notes folded into our modesty to trade at the market. There, the caverns of our bodies rattle […]
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