Glissade

Little Inhabitants The poet wakes in the middle of the night to find that his room, Barely enough for his lean body, is a megacity for the little Inhabitants. Roaches are going and coming, each one with A different sense of urgency, some slow as clumps of dew, Others civil servants in love with the …

I had an opportunity to try migrating without risking everything, a chance to make a mistake and fix it if I had to.

Because he was different, the bus conductor let a lofty hope bud within him, a hope too high for his type: love.

He smokes until he sees something moving in the smoke, remembers Joy like blindness: swimming at Jazeera Beach, gorging on belonging, barwaaqo, iftiin. He remembers riding through Suuqa Bakaaraha on a motorbike, held onto by women with hair trailing behind them like black smoke. It’s raining in London again, Hassan Aden Samatar sings from a …

But I saw my father’s face in their words, his bulging forehead, his yellow eyeballs that widened in their sockets each time he was furious. I remember challenging him to a fist fight.

ISSUES

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