Issue 22

  • Amatoritsero Ede

    Amatoritsero Ede

    End of the American Empire 

    The very title of this think-piece is an exaggeration; appropriately and deliberately so. The new and bloated Orwellian American presidency is an excess of indecorum; official doublespeak; political ignorance, naivety, arrogance and gerrymandering; race-and-religion-baiting; national …

  • Irene Marques

    Irene Marques

    Canada’s Literary Mono-Culture and its ‘Politics’ of Separation

    (Scholar and Poet, Amatoritsero Ede, in conversation with Irene Marques , novelist, poet, short story writer, and Scholar) 

    Amatoritsero Ede: I am particularly gratified to be having this chat with someone …

  • Olumide Oresegun

    Olumide Oresegun

    The Colour of Water 

    Amatoritsero Ede: We are excited to have you on MTLS as the very first guest for 2017. This is because your breath-taking work will set the tone for the rest of the year. First, could you …

  • Mayank Bhatt

    Mayank Bhatt

     Plague 

    March 1993

    She smiled uncertainly; unsure if smiling was the right thing to do when people around us were dying. I was on a bed; she on another, in a hospital ward surrounded by an overpowering smell of disinfectants. …

  • Natalya Polyakova

    Natalya Polyakova

    Lady Frisson

    Today, Marseille is as unwelcoming as never before. My hometown used to encounter me as an old friend always pleased to see me, ready to listen and help. After my getting off the train, it used to embrace …

  • Leigh-Ann Worrell

    Leigh-Ann Worrell

    Rain on a Zinc Roof Fence 

    In the end, your stories are all you have.

    When the body is weak and no one is listening, you sit and think of the days when your back was a little straighter. Walked …

  • Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

    Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

    Red Roses and Chameleons   

    Dream I

    I am in a garden. It is  not like any garden I have ever seen. It is all fleshy succulents and green prickliness. A cactus garden. There are no trees or shrubs …

  • Michael Melgaard

    Michael Melgaard

     Little to Lose 

    Debbie had dinner at the place across the highway from her apartment. When the bill came she went over to the ATM and punched in sixty dollars. She got an insufficient funds message so she tried forty. …

  • Henry Akubuiro

    Henry Akubuiro

    Sambisa Infidels  

    The sun had dropped behind the trees in the dreaded Sambisa Forest. The dimming sunlight met Ibra and his squad trudging in dusts and despair. His tatty jeans, which had known no wash for weeks, attracted a …

  • John Tavares

    John Tavares

    Shoeless 

    A freight train conductor, Jacob seriously considered a career change. Lonely, he considered a move from the town to the city, from Sioux Lookout to Toronto. He had been laid off following a decline in oil and coal shipments, …