Sometimes, my roots—Ife, Babalawo, his cowries, the gods, maami—they make it hard not to believe.

I am sad that grief breaks you into strong fragments/ of strength, for us.

To make things worse, she had no child—something that, in the eyes of her detractors, was the ultimate proof of her witchcraft.

I wanted to say I wasn't a big girl. I was only eleven years old! Eleven was still a child.

A poem by Ariyo Ahmad

I wondered what Mama was protecting about my late father. What dirty linen had she discovered and hidden before anyone came across it?

Imagine that as the song plays in your head, you wonder why your woman has chosen to change her skin.

Christina Purity bought a bottle full of curry spice and thyme and stuck it deep into her vagina so she could spice up her sex life

A story from The Hope, The Prayer, The Anthem. Written by Joshua Chizoma. Read by Amanda.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Afritondo Short story Prize

A poem by Muyiwa Adesokun

I get a wonderful greedy feeling in my stomach that POOP Matters will be back here once the opposition leader gets into power and gets drunk with it and morphs into another problematic dictator.

The first thing we saw was a big chimney that expelled the soot of lost brothers and sisters that couldn’t breathe anymore.

I don’t understand why a man should not once in a while prefer the natural feminine scent of his woman. All this fake fake perfume lifestyle is not my thing.

He was called farmer’s boy within the household, he said, because of what his fingers could do on a piece of farmland.

But then the war came, and they rapidly became adults, people who could make their own decisions.

We don’t stop to ask why everything we do must be in service of a goal. Some things do not have a point, only existing for pleasure and delight, and that is part of the magic of being alive.

A poem on Liberia by Edwin Olu Bestman

I can imagine him, my father, some pride in his voice, informing his friend that his son, a boy they had watched grow up, had left home.

They will forbid their people from voting for anyone that is not Musa. The subjects will take the news to their four wives. Their wives will tell their neighbours. The neighbours will tell their children, and the children will write ‘Sai Musa’ on every wall they see on every street.