We’d go skating on Friday nights. Crawl from the backseat of a Trans-Am or a busted Volvo wagon. It didn’t matter how we got there, just that we did. We’d walk down Metropolitan Street, past the prison, acting tough, hoping …
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Someday, I identify as a Prairie
Glory be to the improper plot: this acre of hand tilled hibiscus
& the dying raven that slants midway, in collapsed grace.
I am thankful for everything that lays chaotic. jagged landmass.
raked mess of depression, inversely proportional …
The Albatross Riddle
There’s a riddle I know about an albatross. Maybe you know it already. It goes like this:
Two men walk into a restaurant where the special of the day is albatross. One man eats …
i become a mind reader
at recess, before a throng of candy-blooded classmates. i put on a fruit loop necklace & clap purple chalk on my palms & mumble “abracadabra” to fashion the illusion.
it’s all smoke & mirrors, of course. the real trick is …
A Missed Prayer
I had never attended Eid at a mosque before. Never knelt to bow my face to the earth for salah or prayer. I could hardly recite al-Fatiha, the opening and most principal verse of the Quran. I’d only ever …
$9000
Dawn was coming through the windows, too quickly, always too quickly, moving much faster than my mind and body ever could. My wife Sharon, beautiful in middle age (and beautiful always!), was sound asleep next to me, her ear pressed …
THERE IS SOOT IN YOUR NOSE, A FIRE AT YOUR DOOR, A NOOSE IN YOUR BED
I. america, the dead star, the rotted plum, the leather fingers ‘round Your
neck
Maud Acheampong (they/them) is a Ghanaian-American New Media Performance artist interested in soft technologies like misery, ugliness, nostalgia, monstrosity and the way they manifest in our …
Introducing Issue 43: This Hustle Is Not Your Grandpa’s African Lit
When African literature is published in the West, it is all too often realist, in English, and in the spirit of Chinua Achebe. But romance, science fiction, fantasy, epic, experimental poetry, satire, and political allegory all find expression in Africa, …
