Poetry

1441 John Chinaka Onyeche  That year, the Atlantic opened its mouth. What it swallowed stayed red for three centuries. You, hunter—I will not say your name. You mistook the shine of a man’s back for the hide of an animal, and called it trade. Now the maps name only the ports. The villages have no […]

A Recipe For Healing John Ebute Warning: Do not go further if you don’t have the heart to stomach new adventures. The delicacies we prepare here first enter the heart before slithering into the stomach.  Ingredients: A bottle, a knife that glints, ten ounces of smiles, a canvas, seven colour shades. Procedure: John Ebute has

Genesis According to Snake Holly Woodward  Snake asked God why he made the earth so fragile it broke with a kiss. God answered, “Long before my birth, I have been wanting to lose this. The world in pieces makes me feel as I walk over its burnt shards, like your bite feels on Adam’s heel

Homemaking  Pleasant Nneoma Stephen  The fingers of rakes are nothing like mine.  When tending to the ground, theirs are distant,  quick to gather and go.  Mine are meticulous, caressing the soil,  separating weeds from black flesh.  Dirt crawls into my claws as I dig deep  into the heart of the ground  to greet worms and

Suffering Competition  Oluwagbenga Kolawole the wind howls tauntingly in my ear as I respond to your summons. I run my fingers down my side, over scars that my skin has now forgotten, past my exposed rib cage, where you  reached in to borrow my heart. Here, there is death, taxes  and glory. I daresay it

The Mathematics of Hunger Ken Odak Odumbe  In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, the prevalence of undernourishment in Sub-Saharan Africa stands at 23.5 percent: But Mama does not speak in percentages. She speaks in the language of the aluminum pot, its bottom scratched thin as a promise. Food insecurity affects approximately 282 million people; Three

Tit for Tat Abigail-Tydale Bassey we strangled trees in their homes  with our hands and while walking away, screamed that  our heads were burning  in the sun  wasn’t the umbrella a miracle?  Flood Migrant as Historian Abigail-Tydale Bassey The first flood that crawled into our home  was impatient for us to pick a thing  it

Directions  Roger David Smith  when you were in your twenties you put a signpost on the lawn of your parents’ house with all the places you had been and wanted to go again brightly coloured arrows pointing in every direction from ‘New York’ to ‘New Zealand’, ‘Costa Rica’, ‘Ochos Rios’, ‘Slovenia’, ‘Oregon’, ‘Prague’, each one

Of Things That Can’t Be Folded Into Metaphors Taiwo Hassan I have no vivid memory of ever hugging you, D. But yesterday, after our phone conversation, something about your last response felt like frail arms, stretched, and a warm body reaching to shield me, as if to say this is what an embrace feels like,

Let me be Water  Taofeek Ayeyemi  The circle begins with a dot. The river begins with a drop. In the wake of people becoming what they chase, let me be water. Let me be a spider weaving a geometry of home and trap. Let me be weaverbirds in a stranger’s yard, picking grains. Let me