Stories and Poems

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 29, 2019

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 April 26, 2019

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 April 26, 2019

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; […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 24, 2019

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 […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 22, 2019

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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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 19, 2019

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 […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 19, 2019

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 […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission April 17, 2019

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 […]

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