LitPub

Siwo siwo siwo Siwooooooooooooooo He was Nigeria’s closest instance of the Renaissance Man: musician, sculptor, inventor, sportsman, architect, scholar, mythmaker, lay philosopher, folklorist, and culture ambassador/impresario. A true Jack of many trades who strove so hard to be master of all, he was a man of  many capabilities , with a voice that was admirably […]

Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange. -Inception This morning the air was serene and Tebogo took it all in. She was sitting on a rock at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, amongst the prettiest of flowers and the grandest of trees, […]

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. […]