Issue 21
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Katie Lynes
North Toronto
The boy rides his bike onto the street without looking both ways. This is in front of my house, not thirty feet from where I sit on the porch reading a book. People still sit on front porches …
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Colleen Anderson
Cuntipotent
I’m tired of being cliticized
cut off from a womb of feeling
and accused of being frigidI want more than my clit flicked
as if it were a fly
or poked and pushed like the panic button… -
George Elliott Clarke
Othello Eyes Desdemona
A soft, luminous body shouldn’t spigot
blood.
But I look at her like Hannibal—
that bull-headed Negro—
looked upon Rome.Hefting a tomahawk,
I descend from Plato’s Cave
to cancel Pandora’s Box.She drowses.
Her breasts … -
Paula Maciejewski
Nature’s Encore
Clouds drift by
Like cars in slow motion
White fluffy
Cotton balls
A variety of shapes and sizes
Spread on blue wallpaperSome taking up more space than others
King-sized soft cushions
Initiated by the wind they… -
Amu Nnadi
A Field of Echoes
… and mind flutters to a close
eyelids to slumber
all over, a certain darkness emerges
earth is populated with nothing
but a tempered sigh tnight flashes white underwear
as meteor, quickly closes her thighs… -
Obari Gomba
On Bull-Headed Art
(Twelve Random Shots)
1
Nothing
Surpasses the length of art.
Nothing, not even
Earthwide stretch of dust.
If fear is the ware you
Bring to town,
Go sell it to the marines
And to terrorists.
They are … -
Tope Omoniyi
Berlin 1997
I came
thinking of the wall
that halved you long ago
I came unprepared
for what you’ve becomeEast to West
Coca-Cola and McDonalds
Spaghetti and Tandoori
light global candles
on concrete mantles and glass screens
your days … -
Irene Marques
Notes on the Incestuous and Monocultural Nexus of the Literati
This piece initially started as a response to Mark Medley’s story “How Liz Howard went from studying science to the Griffin Prize shortlist” published on May 31 in The Globe …
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Mary J. Breen
The Cenotaph
In 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red opened at the Tower of London. Flowing out of the thick Tower walls and filling the moat …
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Sule Emmanuel Egya
Revolution within the Poetic Revolution
Unlike most poets in Nigeria, Osundare did not publish a collection of poetry until he was through with his formal academic studies and had secured a place as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. …
