Home Affairs
I pondered on the moment a little more until I realized that the silence and awkwardness that characterized the room was a culmination of the disbelief of seeing white people in the heart of our township and having to come to terms with the possibility that they, too, could endure what has become such a norm in much of our lives.
We are Music
Come forth Orishas through our ancestors as ebo. / Write sonnets in Adinkra on our minds so we remember, / we are music rooted deep as the foundations of a nation / where our bones are bricks for monuments to liberty once denied.
Hate Speech
“My Dad doesn’t know that your Dad’s Black; he thinks you’re Mexican, so it’ll be okay.”
Gliding
And there was Solitude, / insurgent mother from Guadeloupe, / captured for abetting a slave rebellion. / They waited until she gave birth / to take her life. / Did she rock her baby through the night: / its first and her last? / Did she glide to a realm / where they could be free?
Keeping Brothers
My brother said he’d seen so many dead bodies / And had so much death around him / How could he weep for the poor faces of the Palestinians?
Everything Disappears
I think I disappeared in 1968. I think I spent three years in Bahia, but your Aunt Nires said it was much, much longer. Seven she says…I don’t know now. Could it really have been that long? Who knows…
Still Life with Parrot by Frida Kahlo
I remember the old wives’ tale / repeated too many times / to me when I was little / Spit out those watermelon / seeds or you’ll grow a watermelon
Sunday Mornings
My momma, who woke up before the roosters crowed and before the early birds tickled worms from the earth, was always the last person ready.
karibu
we are all zama-zama here / we dig & drill / our chances / we are all here / with our genocidal scars / tutsi & hutu
A Song About Living
today, the well in my grandmother’s garden is empty./I empty it. / In Vietnamese, nước means water, / means country.
On Origins and Dreams
On the Uber ride home, I remember / to scrape Arab from the tip of my tongue / just in time when the driver asks about the origins / of my name. Tunisian, I say. North Africa.
Love Is
Love is the blossom of the purple flower tree / in harmattan / So that birds and insects will feed / in the dry season / And for the humans, the lucky ones/ to smell and feel the joy
A Striking Space
The paintings appeared like bruises fading in and out in their intensity. Eleanor had worn long sleeves for years and made it her job to inhale her husband’s fits of anger.
Caine Prize Nomination 2024
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Caine Prize for African Writing nominee for 2024.
Forgotten Memories
Perhaps this new life offers him an opportunity to rectify past mistakes, to be a different man from the one who once cast shadows on the canvas of their relationship, creating a portrait of pain by pulling her ponytail, tossing her upon the upholstery, and molding his fists into her frail body like an unrelenting sculptor shaping unforgiving clay.
Reclamation
When I think of the Elmina Castle, / I sense a shift in the tides / I see where stories intertwine / I hear of freedom’s anthem, a melody so rare, / as the waves wash away the weary symbol of pain.
Dangling breasts
The barefooted who danced with the gods / The free women with unstrapped dangling breasts / We danced for all the paths crossed / We danced to the full moonlight until we were ready to set forth again…
In this den should we offer our sacrifice?
Look now, Holy Father, we are turned foreigners in our own land. / Which blood would be enough sacrifice in this den we call earth? / Disarm a ticking bomb and gun held on our head. / Climate change is a hot coal in each and everyone’s back.
My Child’s Hands Trace
some speak of dirt to name the soil that has been displaced / my palms the paths I knew / its lines also contain my futures, / my eyes the family I will not see again / a pile of bodies in between the land and me.
New Words
I want new words that / bring the sky to the shore. Words that bring / one edge to the other edge and create / a surface everyone can walk over and find / that one big daring whatever. That una cosa que es lleno / and stays lleno.
reflection
I ponder the possibilities within this face / from Ghana. not a doppelganger, family / separated by generations and oceans and / chains and ship holds and molasses and / rum and ackee and saltfish and tilapia and / plantain and fufu and bammy and rice &
Foraging for Home
Home. A lazy hammock, / languid between coconut trees, / Home. Thousands of miles across thousands of seas…
I Come to You By Chance
When these words find a place close to you, I hope you hand them an axe to cut through your doors. I hope it breaks through your windows. I hope it gives you sunshine, air, and all the feels to stay open.
Fading Away
My parents are both alive but sometimes I fear that one day, the thread holding their existence in place would snap and all that would remain are memories heaped on history’s back
Embargo
We are all wandering the night, / Searching for one drop of petrol, / And those lucky to find it will be rewarded / with a day of schooling. / Maybe we can after all resist brain drain.
A Letter to the President of Ghana
The rain falls upon every land where we then have sunshine for all and clean air for all to breathe. But when we convert resources of nature into economic resources, not everybody benefits.
When the Killing Ends
someone tell me please: / what will Gaza look like / when the killing ends?
Bones Beneath the Plow
Today perhaps you breathed in the DNA of Nagasaki,/ washed off from dust from Dachau with Soweto’s tears, / picked up echoes from a dark corner of Santiago.
Albert Ayler’s Vision
And why does it always have to be white? / A white god with a white beard dressed / in white (never mind the poor souls / taught to run the other way whenever / they saw men in white robes)
A Post-Apartheid Education for Girls
In school we learnt a great deal about Voortrekkers and spear formations, but we never learnt about what Black men went through during Apartheid, and how they left behind women who raised children in poverty and despair — alone.
Desi
Rain splattered across the window pane. It thwacked hard as a sheen shrouded the glass. Mensa peered across at the dense foliage dripping outside with August globules, leaf blades ripe with gossamer as lightning flashed.
O!
out of the fifth floor window of her El-Biar flat from where she had / watched the Algerian People’s Army open fire on students / journalist Josie jumped
My Passport Photo
I like my passport photos best. My ID card and driver’s license are nothing to me but official certificates of identification. But my passports are permits. Permits for leaving! I know this by experience that any permit to leave is a blessing to me.
Pushcart Prize Nominations 2023
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Pushcart Prize nominees for 2023.
Water Dancing
Today we are hyper-focused on our hair because our hair has a history in enslavement, oppression, rejection, and classism. Our hair has a connection to our African ancestors and our white enslavers.
Germinate in Time
To rip out our roots / they learned our language / exchanged our deities / for saints and the images of virgins. / Out of fear for the scorching flames of the pyre / we turned ourselves into seeds / to germinate at the appointed time.
On Feeding a Fed Horse
I don’t always feel at home in most places. Born in Nigeria, in Ilesa, Osun State, I have lived in the United States since I was seventeen. First, in Cypress, TX. Then, in Houston, TX.
Small Town: On the Scope of Sorrow and Beauty
Although called a “resort,” the place is really a trailer park in a small town, pleasantly overshadowed by mountains. Those of us with modest means either vacation here or live in “park model” homes year round.
history ended
dearest ghosts from biafra / and ethiopia / dearest ghosts / from the apartheid / dearest ghosts from angola / and mozambique / dearest ghosts from libya / and somalia
How My Brother Pronounces Home
He says, “I’m sick of all the breaths I’ve lost in my lungs, I’m sick of water letting me drown in it.” then, I recover how he covers himself in his skin, how he wishes his home, is not a burnt skin.
PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize Nominations
Decolonial Passage is honored to nominate Rosanna Rios-Spicer for her short story “Monarch” and Mungai Mwangi for his short story “The Sling.”
the Decolonial Passage 