Stories and Poems

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/19

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 2019/04/19

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 […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/15

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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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/08

Frieze | Abigail George | Poetry

We citizens of Africa are her volcano people. The burning climate of the sea. Flame climbing to meet the end of the sky. The end of the world. The river’s heart has a hangman’s noose. Glaciers mean change. Her cages made of tough knots. Knots that sharpen the daylight and blue dissolve of the […]

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Features, Fiction, Fiction - Anthology, Lit Scene, News, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/05

This Is How We Love | Diriye Osman | Introduction to Go the Way Your Blood Beats: New Short Fiction from Africa

On 8 April, Brittle Paper will publish Go the Way Your Blood Beats: New Short Fiction from Africa, an anthology of twelve short stories exploring queerness in Southern Africa. Edited by the South African writer Anathi Jongilanga, it is introduced by the Somali author & visual artist Diriye Osman. __________________________________________________________ THIS IS HOW WE LOVE […]

The River-Ocean-Sea Is an Artist | Abigail George | Fiction

The steak knives were missing. Is there any value in that truth? Give me a little earth. A place in the sun. A bowl of shelled, salted and roasted peanuts. Let me have a piece of the supernatural universal in my hands. Give me something to grow in the chilled earth that was once […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission 2019/04/01

Fever Dream | Xolani Mahe | Fiction

For Vista & Unathi Slasha When the Pastor was killed, people got sick. We are chilling at his house, when Chief tells me about this. It’s not the first time he has told me this story, he whines. Often, I’d doze off or transmute into unimaginable horizons, he jeers. Calmly sleepwalker-like, we traverse […]