by Carl Terver   *FOR CHINUA ACHEBE* [After Anthills of the Savannah '. . . our fathers were defeated but they tried' p128] I fondle for ways to speak in the dialectic of Idemili and the laconian soliloquy of a thousand drums Wantaregh Now your words shall breathe on the embers of history and the sparkles, itinerant on untrodden paths [...]

(for Ken Saro Wiwa) By Emmanuel Uweru Okoh   My keen cry to Kenule: I, Fubara, of disjointed Fishnet and gaping boat, from the land of kernel Back feeling and staggering heritage. Of gasping fish and de-flowered flowers, Of frowning waters and stunted stalks. I sit on a lonely log; One of the few remaining. I write on a Dutchman’s Dollar paper. It [...]

by Edwin Eriata Oribhabor  Waka go wie? Yo iye de wok so? yu no si wetin de shele? hie wetin de folo? hu wan ‘‘wait’’ mek i puo fo im hed?   I no go puofo mai hed a no go du smesme fo dis mata   A don de si wetin de hapun dem de se notin de hapun [...]

by Ikhide Ikheloa   For you … I have this note that says call me tomorrow Tomorrow never comes because I never call you Today never ends because you never call me.   I. Another summer escapes into our dreams’ pool slinks, sizzles, spent, drowns wet kids’ hopes. Hooray, another alien season dies in Babylon. Our wallet shoos off ice [...]

By Richard Ali Hunger Hunger is to reach arms across the sea, there’s a distance Over which words will not keep, excepting formulae Like fish and dream and surrender. I’ve seen the pale child On the biscuit line, faith the name of its every step Lift of veteran paddle hitting the surface, causing ripples Then up again—I am the waiting [...]

By Omohan EBHODAGHE Footpaths to decay Hear the lutes and throbs of the fertilizer craze from the look-alike pale West coming with non-everlasting zest, sinking free also into their kinsmen’s diseased minds: down the footpaths of more skeletal services bang labours from their county town shanties by their brothers as were our chiefs to drive mad bustling body parts of their [...]

 by Peter Akinlabi   Oshun Who now remembers the dance from which she emerged, with dual prize of royalty and sadness? Maybe the king-dancer himself, towering above all memory, a limbus in the intertwining history of their bodies   Some kind of love, like an enticing death, makes of human stain something holy. Yet her lot was never reduced to [...]

by Emmanuel Iduma Failing to daydream a life of transcendence, a certain wayfarer found himself at the mercy of his ambitions.1 The first goal he set for himself was to find Voice, knowing as many others before him that to seek a voice was to find a calling, life’s worth, a process that suggested in other words the slippery concept [...]

by Seyi Ojenike When the mist is gone, And the stitches finished, But wounds not healed, My sub-conscious, painting the scene As I quiver in fear Of the human race. Wake me! Eyes flash, back That unfolded october cold finger, Poking my nerves. Eyes stare in disbelief, And a jaw sagging beneath, My reach I raised my voice, Half-crying, half-cursing, [...]

The Bomber Drowned THE BOMBER TOO DROWNED, in his ripple Among the heads, at the belt’s attunement to rage, at the last dead chant– HEAD TO THE SCHEDULED FEAST ON virgin demons; breaths– doused in limbo, hurried on shrapnel; incenses of vengeance against the webs…   HE TOOK THE AIR, yes he did, he took some damn lucky ears he [...]