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.
Tag: writing
ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble
On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.
Book Review: The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton – Arbnora Selmani
Reuniting with translator Polly Barton, Matsuda revisits similar themes in this new collection; across fifty-two stories, she tackles the pervasive misogyny faced by women in contemporary Japan and beyond.
FICTION | The Grammar of Forgetting – Jeffrey-Michael Kane
Desire could drain a reservoir. Fear could empty a playground. And someone like her would be left to label the files.
ONE POEM – Stephanie Russell
The past peels me off like red pared down to
parent rock (think barn, cadaver, three-wheeled
wagon upended in the bee garden).
ONE POEM – Brian Alkire
That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.
ONE POEM – Paul Bavister
You slid the nit comb through my hair
then rinsed and laughed about how
you loved hunting them down
ONE POEM – Harriet Sandilands
legs floating, brush of seaweed
bulging water moves us
up and down
the shore seems very far away
ESSAY | Initiation – Kate Stukenborg
I wanted to be a part of their club, their conversations, their laughter. Eating, I decided, was my way in.
FLASH FICTION | Blue Pieces of Sky – Mikki Aronoff
Stevie busies himself trying to match two blue pieces of sky. You watch him working the corners and the glands in your throat swell.
ONE POEM – Miriam Ashford
If you walk along a path
between forest and shore
between grains eroded by the sea
they were mountains once
INTERVIEW | Artist Mimi Kunz
I found that writing and art keep me sane, they’re like a room of my own in a time when I’m rarely alone.
Porridge 