Stories and Poems

Archive | Stories and Poems RSS feed for this section

Features, Stories and Poems, Submission March 12, 2020

Dying To Become | Ogbonna Ogochukwu | Poetry

We wanted to fill up our shoes Those ones our mothers bought To win the battle with our growth And the jackets too We waited for the day when their sleeves Stopped going past our wrist to our fingers So, we measured our shoulders against each other We wore our mothers lipstick And pretended that […]

The First Citizen | ‘Kunmi Olamiju | Fiction

11th of April To: The First Citizen, Humble Comrade Bolongo From: His Excellency, President for Life, Supreme Field Marshall, Doctor Erugegeaye Amin the First, Conqueror of the People’s Economic Woes and Eternal Defender of the Final Revolution. I write this letter to you, my dear friend, hoping it meets you in good health. I […]

Physics Textbook Explains Why People Can’t Leave Abusive Marriages | Abdulbaseet Yusuff | Poetry

i. origin of F F/A = Stress In this poem & in your life, the letter F is everything— F for the force that brews inside a clenched fist lowercase f for frequency: the number of times that fist remodels your jaw Today my head is buried between the algebraic union in […]

A Journey in Desire | Iretomiwa Xaron | Nonfiction

THAT AFTERNOON, I was performing a repetitive task. I was on the internet searching for LGBTQ+ movies. The best, I told myself, as I typed a bunch of search terms into my Chrome browser. The results came out in less than a second. “13 Best LGBT+ Movies of 2019.” Scroll, scroll, scroll. To the bottom. […]

Read More 0 Comments

Features, Stories and Poems, Submission March 3, 2020

Ark | Onyekwelu Chiwenite Kingsley | Poetry

I write tributes on my palms, plait my body into grief. Each day we live is a parting tribute to Earth. Flowers nailed to a cross. Wall portraits displaying dreams and memories. My body grows on the edge. I burn incense to mourn the sea. There is something that keeps bringing the living to the […]

Read More 0 Comments

Features, Stories and Poems, Submission March 2, 2020

The Lucky Ones | Alistair Mackay | Fiction

THE FIRST THING Andile did when he discovered the grey pube was pour himself a whiskey. The second thing he did was call Litha. “I have a grey pube,” he said when Litha picked up. “What time is it?” “How can I have a grey pube when I’m not even thirty?” Litha cleared his throat. […]

Read More 0 Comments

Features, Lit Scene, News, Nonfiction, Stories and Poems, Submission March 1, 2020

Read an Excerpt from Unoma Azuah’s Embracing My Shadow, Nigeria’s First Memoir About Being Lesbian, Out Today

Unoma Azuah, novelist, poet, academic, curator, and one of Nigeria’s leading LGBTQ rights activists, has her third book coming out today, 1 March. Titled Embracing My Shadow: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria and published by Beaten Track, it will be the first memoir by a Nigerian about being lesbian. It comes three years after Chike Frankie […]

In the Palms of Night | Chisom Okafor | Poetry

Let us not even dream of speaking, no For the stars are luminous phones In the palms of night. ─ Rolli I am helpless to this golden twinkling at sundown: this architecture of clouds, dyed into a line of yellow neonness; to how the sky bends into a circumference around the departing sun as […]

Read More 0 Comments