Month: September 2024

Jaundiced – Hibah Shabkhez

You and I, ma chère langue étrangère, we stand on the banks of the Loire, ruefully watching our poor twisted paper boats lurch downriver in the sunset-gilded waves. The sun simmers steadily upon the same crinkled place, but our broken…

Night song – Abdulrazaq Salihu 

after Sylvia Plath The rusty blood of brown blades Set your body to rest like bean seed In dry soil — decay.My small palms lay  5 inches  too smallTo hold your shoulders and the soft-Cracked air the night flushes in.An ode starts…

I Will Remember Your Name – Mayor Prosper Ihechi

Because the seers follow you across lifetimes. I am dreaming, and in my dream, we are together again, Temisola- the girl I can no longer remember, you. There is no face. All that remains is a voice, scratchy, like a…

Christening of Peculiar Things – Oliaku Wisdom Ikechukwu 

Call the world how it unfolds,a feeble, starving petal growing in your blistered palmstowards the sun, from the spaces between your fingers where mine used to intertwine.Call my love how it reaches,this nimble, persistent thing floating in an oceanof hurt inside…

Four Poems by Tomas Maldonado 

Muzungu Kwanjula  Have you ever seen Kampala from an airplane on a warm summer afternoon? The reddish marks of highways expand as far as the graves of the forgotten  women of Juarez. Their names known only to the angels dancing in the…

‘The Past Future War’ & ‘Mane’ – Mark Kennedy Nsereko

(Use desktop mode to get the best visual experience of Mark’s poems) The Past Future War                 the oldies think they’re gold                                    the futures…

The Gift that arrived at Night | Nande T.S Kamati

Not so long ago, in a time when salt was as precious as gold, there once was a family whose story whispered through the winds of time. They lived in Shamba, a land of secrets and wonders, where every stone…

ISSUE 1 Non-Fiction

Grieving Without Borders – Nwajesu Ekpenisi

Grief is like the ocean. It comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.—Vicki Harrison. The humid Saturday morning’s chilling breeze slapped me beneath…

Petrichor

Petrichor.  That’s the word he used—the one he called the scent you said you perceived outside. The scent of rain, soil–the one curling into your nose right now. “I can swear,” you began. “Swear?” you remember, he said, interrupting you…

Signs – Nozhan Resalati

Nozhan Resalati is a writer and an ESL teacher based in Iran. He writes short stories, flash fiction, nonfiction, and plays.