LitPub

My name is Kaldi, the legendary founder of coffee from Ethiopia. I might have died many years ago, but my spirit is on an important mission to Nairobi. Our hero, Jonah the depressed writer and I were united by my friendly poison, which I discovered in the year of Our Lord 850 AD. The truth […]

               PRELUDE I remembered asking a parent of my year-two student, “How is Mohammed? He was absent yesterday and I was worried about him when I heard about the bombing in Bab Al Aziziya.” “They hit our neighbor’s house, Miss Noeme. It was three houses away from us. We had to run and stay with my […]

Ṣesí. T’ọkọ T’aya. Tóyìn. A pause. Ánklùs. This is how I know I am close to home: tarred roads give way to dusty ones narrowed by gullies that claim more of the road each rainy season. The names are of bus-stops leading to Òkè-Àró, a confluence town where my father chose to build his house. […]

I am not terrified  of the dark. I do not know  if the arms of God  would hold me  like poetry has done  every time my floater resurfaces  as I spiral beneath the waves.    When I break, does God break too? Why must I do all the breaking alone?  Look at all the healing  […]

The grey clouds enveloped the valley which nestled the school – an affluent boarding school for boys only. Sandwiched between two hilly edges, the school was part of a small urban growth point that benefited from Nonibe’s historical sites.  The school was  closing for the term that day and the queue was the last group […]

I it all started with a white school teacher  locking  her grade 5 pupils  inside  a classroom a black boy in a corner breathing slowly deeply      by the strength of his own legs frantically  climbing attempting  to escape by way of the classroom window,             possessed by the fight or flight   drowning     […]

but I’ll wash you clean. Bring me the bath water and soap, I’ll have to wash you off my skin          off my tongue                  off my marrows, till you transform into a scum-flow I’ll trap in a bath bowl, un-forgetting to spill the water and the baby into a memory […]

j.w i bless you for training my heart for war for making me believe it’s not every girl who prefers her lover black and smart and whatever e.w i celebrate you like the way a country celebrates its independence like the way our house celebrated the conception of a barren aunty remember in junior high […]

you have cheated death so much the first time, you weren’t even alive. the angels are less fortunate than you are sometimes, i wonder how that makes them feel but you can’t tell someone how to deal with their misfortune you took too long to form that is what happens when God calls you Lazarus […]

For World Poetry Day 2021 today, we ask some of our leading contemporary writers to give their thoughts on what work of poetry they will recommend that everyone read at least once in their lifetime. Here are the responses: There is a long and rich history of poetry coming from all the different countries and […]