Glissade

"Nigerian men, fear them. They are wicked. Wicked! Especially Igbo men. They can be at home or at a friend's place drinking beer and talking nonsense, while their wives are out in the sun, farming. And when the women returned home tired, they would expect her to go to the kitchen in that state, while …

Èjìrẹ́, Aráìsokún, ẹdunjobi, Ọmọ ẹdun tí ń ṣeré orí-igi. Ọ̀kan ni mo bèrè, èjì ló wọlé tọ̀ mí wá. You were asleep when you were born, in my hand, your reflection split into two. The men who were hired to forsake your silence brought drums & took you out to it. I looked back at …

A few hours later, you were trying to rebuke grief. You smiled, leg-working, lori iro…

  “It wasn’t until Gabriel squeezed away what was empty in him that the Prophet could be filled with miracle.” —Kaveh Akbar, ‘The Miracle’ 1. Your phone vibrates in your pocket and you pull it out with a soft drag, afraid it’ll slip out of the soft of your hand onto the hardness of the …

  My brother, held tight to his  belief like a limpet holding onto algae,  chewing it off a hard rock. So when  he joined Boko Haram, we only saw it  on the leaf he left us that read: I have  left to strive in the path of my Lord. Ya  Ilahi, I agree, belief eats at a …

The baby, nameless still in this model of spirituality, and his parents, Sarah and Fabian, catechists at Saint Mary’s parish, sit in the front pew. The baby’s godfather and uncle, who is Uche elsewhere, but not on this day, not in this ritual where he must be Silas, sits behind the baby’s parents. There is …

ISSUES

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