hear here are some of the things my nails can do: —push through the backs of the cockroaches that run around my room. They’re crunchy at first and then slip-smooth and soft inside. Their they’re fast but I’m faster —when I lie really still in the dark I can feel my heartbeat in my nails, […]
The first time Minna holds someone’s fortune in the palm of her hand it feels like a living, breathing thing trembling against her palm. As though she’s holding a small animal instead of a deck of cards. “I want to know if he likes me,” the girl sitting across from her says. “Can the cards […]
This is a work of the author’s imagination, an alchemy of memory and soul’s longing. Beth joined the turn-lefters, pulled off the highway, and found a park beneath a giant fig tree before the twins even registered. Then heads turned like open-mouthed clowns. Confusion; at last, the dawning. They’d been restless, constrained by seatbelts and […]
When you put the lighter to it, it spits and hisses on the spoon, gives off a sweetish, rank smell. Congeries of bubbles appear and from each as it bursts a tiny figure stretches and claws its way free; they writhe, leap upward like a salmon in pain, then collapse. There’s thousands of them upon […]
I Banji has been scamming for well over six months and he is not far from where he was when he began. His clients pay cheap money: two divorced women from Newton Abbot sent a fifty and a seventy pound itunes gift card, respectively; a fifty dollar card from a young woman who works in […]
My brother phoned me to explain the situation: about the vault, about the lack of a plaque. He caught me mid-morning, as I was under the influence of a bad night of sleep, and I heard him while resting my forehead on my hand; resting, then, the full weight of my head, of my exhausted […]
There was nothing here but swirling grey fog, and me. The laces around my waist were cinched so tight I could hardly breathe. A comb threaded through my hair, and in my hands I held an apple. For the longest time I sat in the haze, listening to silence. Then, footsteps. Your face swam into […]
My mail box is full of papa’s whisperings. Even now that I no longer need them, they are voices refusing to acknowledge my silence. Dear Daughter, I am trying this again. Sometimes I sit for hours, not knowing what to write. How to write it. I imagine your reaction. I write. I crumble. For each […]
I When you come to Lagos from the heart of Osogbo, you know you’re going to have to work till your knuckles bleed, till the bones in your back go sour, if you want to survive in that jungle. You have been to Abuja, Benin, Ibadan, Ilesha; offering your services of impeccable housekeeping. Then Aunty […]
Every evening we tie Mama down. It’s my job to fold a clean rag for her to bite on, so she won’t hurt her tongue. Three folds, hot dog style. Now that I’m thirteen Baba even lets me place it between her teeth. Ray, four years younger, is too little to do anything except watch, […]
