Porridge

ESSAY | A Citizen Of The World – Isaac Aju

There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.

TWO POEMS – Zlatitsa Markova

I fell in love with this city through your eyes
and from the back of taxi cabs.

TWO POEMS – Jack William Mulvaney

Sadly, saw one dead cat
Cut down on pavement side
A few in lament stood over
Its lifeless body, white

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Ruth Deyro

Cold waters caress my feet like lovers kept apart
by chance. Foam meets flesh. Flesh kisses sand deeply,
forming wet clay against my soles. I press harder—

ONE POEM – Michael Akuchie

i am a city mad with fear

with sunshine eating up bodies in the open air

TWO POEMS – Michelle Diaz

I want to scrape back the clouds
and bring morning to you on a tray,
allow you that extra hour.

SHORT STORY – Viv Mah

In the worst of Anna’s dreams, Eric is always at his best: more alert, more alive, and more charming than she can remember.

COMFORT FOODS // Pawpaw Meat – Miriam Gauntlett

I don’t look Chinese, I don’t speak the language besides a few words here and there, and I have never met any of my Chinese family besides my grandmother; put simply, I don’t have much Chinese cultural knowledge at all. And yet, my grandmother gave birth to my mother, and my mother gave birth to me.

TWO POEMS – Yuan Changming

I don’t remember how many years old
I am, but I do care about my birthday

ONE POEM – Debatri Das

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash Debatri Das is a student studying English Literature in Kolkata, India. Her work has previously appeared in LangLit, Muse India and Esthesia Magazine. Her interests include feminism, gender constructions and how that operates within her immediate surrounding. Things they said to young girls i.…….Don’t say that you don’t like this ………Or you…

THREE POEMS – Carly Maria Hubbard

Carly Maria Hubbard earned her BA in Creative Writing from DePaul University. Her poetry has appeared in Crook & Folly, Pentimento, and Hooligan Magazine and her flash fiction in formercactus and Flash Fiction Magazine. She is an accidental one-time winner of the Uptown Poetry Slam and often suspects that the spirit of Lucille Clifton is trying to contact her. Currently, Carly is…

The Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius: A Hero over the Regal Complacency – Freya Zhang

Freya Zhang is a young critic from Shanghai. She is currently based in London, pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature in King’s College London. After being awarded a scholarship under the State Scholarship Fund organized by China Scholarship Council in 2017, she pursued her further study in University College Cork for a semester, where she…

ONE POEM – Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Photo by Tikkho Maciel on Unsplash Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a GREAT scholarship awardee, and has earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from England. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Across The Margin, In/Words Magazine and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journaland…