Winner of the Afritondo Short Story Prize 2020.

every eye holds a picture of the / sea angrily beating its shore

I was surprising even myself with all this wisdom. I guess beauty has a way of bringing out the best things in us.

A few months back, it would have been a death sentence just to walk these roads—gun or no gun. The war seemed to be truly at its end, and I was on the right side of that end.

You had gone to pick up the ornaments and decorations for your photographs and the two beautiful matching pyjamas you had ordered for yourself and him.

The baby, has a baby / She’s no longer a child / A child she must now bear

No more love / Only the harvest of /golden-yellow sunflowers/ Another summer on hold

A thick wad yesterday because he was a potbellied politician/ Wafer-thin today because he is a construction worker/ Something is better than nothing

She was between the devil and the deep blue sea. The deep blue sea that led to Europe was better than the devil at home.

Gather woods /Make a fire /Stand strong before the smoke

Courage was foreign to me. It was something I couldn’t grab and make mine. But not that Tuesday.

Monde was left to race against the sun, for the moment it set, the night entertained the dead.

ChiUkwu is called ChiUkwu for a reason. He is the only god with “ukwu” attached to his name. The Great. The Supreme. And what does a man so weak that the rains had beaten the melanin off him know about greatness?

Solemnity—A poem by Arthur Davies | Liberia

The poster says he’s selling “tried and trusted weak erection and penis enlagment creams.” Tried and trusted by whom exactly? Those who cannot spell enlargement?

They preach prosperity year in, year out, and during election tell you not to vote for a Muslim if you are a Christian. Or not vote for a Christian if you are a Muslim. Election is next year, you will see with your two eyes. That is if you do not leave the country oh. Anyway, you can watch from over there in the abroad.

Ice got him to stop talking

But your father wasn’t always like this. Before your birth, he was one of the sweetest men I had known.

I am not sure he can hear me above all the noise: the honks of vehicles, the murmur of roadside traders, the barbershop loudspeaker, the screams of the conductors.

We danced not to forget your message / We danced to live up to the kofifi blues