Abdulaziz sat on the floor and listened to the screams and the music through his window. Outside, everything was wild. He wasn’t old enough to remember the last election, but he couldn’t imagine it being as loud as this one. He was scared. All that noise, those colors… It was too much. When his bedroom [...]
You chant, plead and pour libations on tethered stones, call forth lost gems trampled beneath desecrated soil while palm trees wave to dried up sappy sap. Amulets are but charmed wishes, imaginary baits of burnt out fretful fishermen. Treasures are only worth a dime to the hungry. Listen to yourself converse as the sky sleeps, [...]
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The equator runs across these highlands . . . and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. --Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa. It is difficult for me to relate to Isak Dinesen’s experience. New York Jewish women do [...]
You have a head, I have a head; Hence, we are alike. But you say you are man, and I am not. Therefore, I am weak. ~ I have a brain, Just like you do. Therefore, I can think And do the things you can. But you insist that I am frail. ~ You have a [...]
Fatigue only pushed them onward. Concepts of time diffused in their wake. Hunger atrophied-- a hollow thought redressed by expectation. On and on and on they soared through the comforting cold of liquid space. Above them the great void; below the dense, rocky base of the world; ahead only blackness. Gliding up, then down, the [...]
We upload your consciousness, it runs in a simulated 1960s Lagos, the quaint elder city; but it's totally cool! OK, it runs slowly, and it's grainy (a few details are lacking), but the Uploaded never notice; they lack detail too. Your body is destroyed in the process, but it's immortality; don't worry, we keep you backed up, we [...]
I lick the blob of blood on the tip of my thumb and resist crying as we paddle our old canoe toward the effulgent rays emanating from the lake. “We should probably uproot that tomorrow morning.” Papa tips his head toward the slim plank jutting out from the water near the rickety dock behind. My [...]
“It is time to move on,” the elders had proclaimed when the last of the grass and bushes near the village were gone and the sand flowed over land that had once been fertile. It was the same story that had been replayed over millennia of time. As the land grew parched, the people would [...]
The tear was gruesome. It came from the coat hook that had caught Meena on the back of her shoulder, after she fell from the ladder. She had been attempting to change a light bulb in the kitchen but now she stood in the bathroom, twisting her body toward the mirror, staring. The tear was [...]
While some played for chump change, she played for rain born of island people stolen to move the great machines on another stolen island once rimmed with hills and green. The vast teal sea was always near. She sang when it was blue. She went within, among the finned. It taught her to sing true, [...]
Sub-Saharan Magazine 