Stories and Poems

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/05/03

My Mother’s Unknowing Son | Theophilus Sokuma | Poetry

Mother is a praying hand & a spitting tongue of fire. Her knees have become tree roots after endless hours of being buried in the earth. Her face ashy red from the nonstop incense burning. She spits fire from her tongue, sending them to the devils lurking around. The devil that I think I […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/05/03

The Day Dorothy Disappeared | Dimakatso Sedite | Poetry

Content Warning: This poem contains depictions of physical violence. He enters her kitchen like a wind from Namibia Pots clank in fear. Her face, a mature firm fruit, becomes a fracture. There he stands, a rod on two legs; She wilts, like a peach forgotten to be picked. Her fear is shreds of […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/05/01

Love’s Pure Light | Victor Adams | Fiction

Chigozie sat by the palm tree overlooking the stream, counting the seconds as he waited. The evening breeze felt cool against his skin. The skyline above him was a dull orange gauze as the sun fell from its majestic throne above the earth and the sky’s creatures flew in waves as they receded […]

Your Back Turned | Abbey Khambule | Fiction

You plant my tiny feet in a flowerbed white with clouds of lilies of the Nile. A gust of cold wind twirls dead leaves fallen off the master’s winter tree back onto the deck you had just swept clean. And, while the cats skirt round the edge of the garden reluctant to wet their […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/26

Bana Dede | Nana Yaa A. Asante-Darko | Poetry

Your body is the last house left in a ghost town whose inhabitants took their good time to practise their segue, make their departure thorough, and sound like a tribute to reluctance they stayed the years it took to exorcise the idea of a revenant and scrub clean memory off your walls all what’s […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/26

This Is How God Happens | Olajide A. Omojarabi | Fiction

Sometimes, God happens in showers. Papa once owned a house. At Angwa Rimi in Jos. When he and his friends spoke of houses the same way women speak of pregnancies, his often sounded much like a stillbirth. The house collapsed, already roofed and plastered, after days of ceaseless showers. I never saw the house; […]

2031 | Y’I Oche | Fiction

“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 […]

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 […]

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