Stories and Poems

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Features, Stories and Poems May 12, 2020

Running in a Red State | Cymelle Leah Edwards | Poetry

Don’t be political. Sinclair Wash Trail: Anger is that which your body recognizes as alien; that which has been whittled nonexistent; you temper that emotion at the age of eight when you indulge it and learn that your angry is angrier because it’s also darker; when you serve a man who says he’ll take his […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission May 12, 2020

neon lights at noon | Nkateko Masinga | Poetry

the trouble with crying at Times Square is that you are a body in a sea of bodies sailing from one heartbreak to the next the year is new & you are still just you, except older, with less apartment space & less breathing space and a neon red flash flood alert on […]

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Features, Stories and Poems, Submission May 11, 2020

Montage on Haircuts | Akinwale Fadoju | Fiction

2009 IDEAS TO DESCRIBE Barack Obama are some of the bestselling things in the world. In Nigeria, the association of barbers convened a one-agenda congress commemorating Obama and a hairstyle, so eponymously named, had been invented: A certain fraction of hair would be left at the front of the head, and the sides and back […]

Dawn of Darkness | by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | Poetry

Knowing we are currently in a pandemic, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o graciously wrote this poem and would like it to be shared widely. We hope it brings you comfort. The poem was written on March 23, 2020. Read it and share! *** I know, I know, It threatens the common gestures of human bonding The handshake, […]

Is It Still Beautiful? Motherhood and Mental Health During a Pandemic | Ukamaka Olisakwe | Nonfiction

The only photographs I have on my LG mobile phone are my children’s. They are 17, 15, and 13, and every one of those photos show them wearing big smiles or pouting or frozen in some silly Snapchat filters that make them look like characters in an animated picture. They live in Aba, Nigeria, with […]

Between Colours, Senses, Words and Worlds: Harry Garuba’s Transition | Katleho Kano Shoro | Poetry

For Professor Harry Garuba You are in a lime green, waterproof jacket hooded. Restlessly standing on the pavement— overhead: grey concrete around you: vapour— on a street that resembles the Sunday-vacant ones in Jozi (although, the dream calls the street Lagosian, we tell it we believe it by continuing). It is misty. After you […]

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Features, Stories and Poems March 26, 2020

Neighbors (A Quarantine-Themed Fiction) | E. C. Osondu

My neighbor Vinny Capriani is a great neighbor. I’m happy to have him as one. I live in a state where a man shot another because his kids’ basketball fell into his neighbor’s yard. So I’m happy Vinny is my neighbor. My other neighbor, a tubby attorney, has only spoken to me once. He wanted […]

Tope Folarin and Nnamdi Ehirim Longlisted for the 2020 VCU Cabell First Novel Award

Tope Folarin and Nnamdi Ehirim are both on the longlist of the 2020 VCU Cabell First Novel Award. The annual book prize is presented on behalf of Virginia Commonwealth University MFA in Creative Writing Program and sponsored by James Branch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Libraries, the VCU Department of English, Barnes & Noble @ VCU, and the […]

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