Adam of Abak – Chinuzoke Chinuwa
So, if the world is different now
that I don’t belong in Heaven, do I have
to grow Paradise alone?
Answer me, dear ghost
of my youthful lust.
You who led me here,
naked and clueless.
Mosquito Bite – Chinuzoke Chinuwa
but what did he wait for?
A wife who owed him a kiss, a crown from a dying
king’s head, an ill child’s embrace, a life after death?
So much waiting, so you look forward to night-time
when dreams unlikely to come true are the brightest
All Those Losses – Prosper Ifeanyi
Sometimes I listen to my
mother & father talk in the bedroom; they must love
each other so much even in their muffled cries of
things they both have lost. What can they do if not
place hearts into each other’s chests?
F I S H H E A D – Brian Gyamfi
I slit them. Each cut smoked and flourished.
I became heaven, water flowing from flesh,
blemish-black ginger scent. The priest left the crust
and I smiled like an old man’s
house, sadden to see crumbs scattered
W H A T W I L L P E O P L E S A Y – Brian Gyamfi
At Sea World my nanny once said, “it’s ridiculous to be given an old heart as if it’s an object, like expensive cement, or a leg so blistered and plunging.” Now she’s dead.
Reincarnated as the centipede father squashed; she’s dead again.
Gazelles – Simon Ng’uni
there must be wind high enough to raise this song above the mountains;
there must be waves full enough to fill the hollow which forms
the valley should the tides break
if your feet fail, there must be wings, and only such things that belong to air
To Call the Air a Limb – Tahnia Barrie
We mean to tuck in her backbone
There to nighten, to drink the color and the flight from her
Before she knows enough to call the air a limb,
And to call the limb, a wing, two,
Growing on marrow.
God Gets Caught Sobbing Uncontrollably in His Hands – Nicole Adabunu
he looked at his hands, looked
at his children’s looking of him. carnage for miles,
generations, the wail of a mother swaddling
a purpled corpse, screaming against heaven
for answers. how all this blood amounts to nothing
In Memory of Those Who Chose the Other Sea – Tramaine Suubi
lake nalubaale buoys me as i stage
a revolt against you for daring to baptize
my obsidian skin in sin, to soak my largest organ
in your guilt, i say no more
no longer will i pacify your shame
Changeling – Tramaine Suubi
how do i tell my mother
that she gave birth to a hurricane
part shapeshifter & part indigo child
at any given moment
i am bending the rain, faithfully
Bathsheba Remembering – Hana Meron
Unmoor everything around me to grieve;
The cost of unraveling all mine to pay.
There’s not a man in this world I would die for,
including the Lord.
I’d burn the whole world for my son.
The Fishmonger – Lola Oh
I’m not afraid of the water
but what it makes of me. the
fishmonger wraps a trout
head in brown paper and I want
to say wait stop it can’t breathe
I want to take all the fish back
