LitPub

When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they were thought to be business records, but what if they were poems or psalms? My love is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. — Jack Gilbert. […]

The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness – Gueorgui Pinkhassov I am on Instagram fiddling through images. I am looking at pictures by Fati Abubakar. The account @bitsofborno is titled Yerwa. Maiduguri, also called Yerwa by the locals, is the capital and largest city of Borno State in North-Eastern Nigeria. These images are […]

I.    Among all the genres of music I heard constantly as a child, classical music came to me and stayed. Growing up as the son of a clergyman in a close-knit family immersed in religious rituals, music was a constant tie that held each passing day and gave meaning to my preoccupations. My family […]

Translated by Cliff E. Landers “The dark-blue suit, dear, the one I brought back from Indonesia some days ago.” (She had asked, “What are you wearing to the reception, André?”) There went Belita, once again silent, spending her life at the ironing board. Her eyes, inexpressive but at the same time with a serenity that […]

That evening, the prophet singled me out & asked the church to fervently pray for me that in a vision, he pulled me out of a room of cobwebs & that an old woman in my father’s house hid my star in a black pot buried at the base of a baobab tree. Outside my […]

i will leave the dead in your body some room to dance. i will sit beneath the baobab tree with drums of tulips by self-acclaimed craftsmen. i will call forth boneless children & make  seats from udala trees for them. we’ll sit, we’ll eat, & drink too. we’ll be the motivators the eyes of the […]

How often we find rest in the place for longing,  fame in the space of hiding,  the truth in the face of the neonates.  I’m taken by the fate of your scalp,  this brocade of tide, gulping at healing  a dead sight with sighs & jittery culls. How often light lords over our woe  & […]

for ek. today i will visit your grave after three years, I am eager to know what has become of your black stained chest. & at your burial, your dissected limbs that were placed side by side makes me think  of the doll’s limbs my little sister is spending  her childhood dissecting from its torso. […]

yes to the light  turning, delicate summer— language of wonder,  bone of miracle; I believe in love I believe in longing— somewhere a boy bangs  his fist against a wall—begging  magic to open  up; what does it mean to be lost in the light  of another—to let the rain  touch the stamen & stem—what does […]

May I be the drum. O, let the earth beat me with all its grief— the drumsticks of gloom slapping my hide— but may I still remain the origin of dance.    O, let me claim what was sent to claim me. Let the world beat me with all its woes but let me not […]