Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the nominations for next year’s Pushcart Prize Anthology. This list includes writing published during the 2024 calendar year. Congratulations to the nominees!
Poetry
Byron Armstrong – “We are Music”
Short Stories
Nwafor Emmanuel – “You Are No Longer Welcome Here”
Michael Ogah – “Forgotten Memories”
Essays/Memoirs
O you couldn’t buy this incredible night beyond tender,
wouldn’t take nothing for the glory of it
the incense, the food, the fire
remembrance squared in golden frame.
We are here to know you beyond a funeral of clutter
beyond a dessert of thieves, beyond
the oppression of earth stationed dreams ——
here is where we break bread
here is where we play cards
here is where we pound our fists
here is where we down our wine
here is where we lay out the cloth
to spread the bounty in
a house of tables
Here is where we place the centrepiece of life
the brass hued glow of our every breath
here is where we figure the time we must eat and sip
the undercurrents in our warmest conversations
here is where we repeat like the ones before us
but right here in front of us now
as we offer libation with their eyes and contours
as our countrymen seam us in death shrouds
as we bring the scissors and the bandages
the liquor and balm for our mangled backs
our roughened sores
here is where we gobble the turkey
and lay our heads down in the midnight hour
while our loved one’s sleep
in a house of tables.
Here is where we take the minutes
at the meeting place
as we draw plans to stave off darksome shadows
sheeted white
imploding in our conscious wake
like ashes of our beloved children, boiled
and hailing over hallowed congregations
via fires direct from hell
Here is the good linen I tell you to cover the water spot
as we feed the living with communal potluck,
Hoppin’ John and hog maws,
sweet potatoes and greens,
as we oblige the mirror of ourselves in ourselves,
keepers of our secrets, colours of our flesh
as we implore our gods as to the ways of our murderers
and the whys of our own self hatred
as we shine the wood and flick ashes in trays made by little ones
in a house of tables
Here is the universal thing,
favours of anniversary, christening and homegoing,
teaching grandfather to read by lamplight
the back and forth, the generations
the way we propped up that one short leg with the encyclopaedia,
a conceit handed down from mother to daughter in
a house of tables.
Kamaria Muntu is an African-American multidisciplinary artist whose poetry and essays have been published in Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology for the African American Literary Tradition, A Lime Jewel: An Anthology of Poetry and Short Stories in Aid of Haiti, Phati’tude Literary Journal, GIS Watch, Fertile Ground: Memories and Visions, Intersectionality in Social Work: Activism and Practice in Context, and The Journal of Pan African Studies. She has read at arts festivals and literary venues throughout the US and UK. Find her on Instagram at @kamariamuntu.
I prefer to be considered a particular person, although I’m from Nowhere. Where I come from doesn’t exist. This creates a confusing situation since logic dictates that everyone come from somewhere. It looks like I defy logic. I come from Nowhere. It has been told to me many times, by many authorities, and government officials, and all sorts of serious people in their decent suits. I see no reason to doubt them. I’d rather doubt your logic.
Strangely, I don’t have a language. People where I’m from speak in a nonexistent language. It has been stated by many experts and authorities, and there is no reason to doubt them. But I also don’t speak much of the nonexistent language. I speak some existing languages, but I cannot call any of them my native language. As a result, I have no language of my own. I borrow other people’s languages. I speak weirdly with my unusual accent and occasional pronunciation errors. I guess everyone assumes I must be speaking well in some other language. I don’t. To me, every language is a foreign language. Every word I utter is borrowed. I have no words of my own.
I speak in these foreign languages in my head when I take walks. They become entangled, creating a creole language that would be unintelligible to nearly everyone else. Maybe that is why I like talking to myself. I also like walking. I usually combine these two favorite activities of mine.
If I have to move from one place to another, I always prefer to walk. I enjoy walking the most when it isn’t directed towards the aim of arriving somewhere. Because when you aren’t walking towards somewhere, it can be said that you’re walking to Nowhere. So, I know that if I don’t walk towards a specific place and I still insist on walking, I’ll eventually arrive Nowhere. And that is where I’m from. I go out and walk aimlessly, secretly hoping that I may eventually visit my hometown: Nowhere. I miss Nowhere. All these somewheres have been tiring me for quite some time now. They are very noisy and full of unpleasant faces.
I never get to visit my Nowhere though. Sometimes I find myself in Nowheres that are not exactly like mine. I may see nonpeople there, sitting on both sides of the long street that runs through Nowhere; but they won’t be sitting on short stools. That is how I know immediately that this isn’t my Nowhere. They may drink something, but it won’t look like black tea. They may speak some nonexistent languages, but I won’t be familiar with them. “I’m at someone else’s Nowhere again”, I say to myself when this happens. It’s still good to visit Nowheres even when they’re different than mine. The familiarity of Nowheres is usually nice. But not always. Not when I see an intruder, for example. The intruders are also all too familiar to me, but there is nothing pleasant about them.
The intruders are actual persons in a Nowhere full of nonpeople. There are always some of them in Nowheres, but you usually manage to avoid them. They come from somewhere, you see, and they speak existing languages. They tend to wear nice uniforms. They are hostile to nonpeople wherever they find them. They can smell us. It doesn’t matter that I’m not from this particular Nowhere. Nonpeople are nonpeople. The intruders know that. They don’t like being in a Nowhere. They take it out on us.
You can also see these intruders in existing places. That is where they come from, after all. They look at us with disdain, they can tell that we are one of the nonpeople. They know we come from Nowhere and we don’t belong here. We don’t belong anywhere, except for Nowhere, obviously. They make us feel that. They talk about their somewheres, and their somethings, and their someones with absolute confidence. We can’t talk about our Nowhere, and our nothing, and our nonpeople with the same confidence. We become silent. Our weirdly pronounced foreign words become reserved for our conversations inside our heads. Until we decide to write them down.
Let us nonpeople take long walks whenever we can. It may get us Nowhere.
Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He teaches courses on armed conflicts, dehumanization, racism, colonialism, and qualitative research methods. Find him on Mastodon at fediscience.org/@SerhatTutkal and on Bluesky at serhattutkal.bsky.social.
A Black man is born
not expected to thrive
disposable in ’Nam
not expected to survive
In the bushland encampment
he bled the same red
shed tears of sorrow
when his brothers returned dead
Heard their mothers’ screams
hoped for a safe return
yet the privileged alongside him
had a different reason to yearn
For their welcome home
heroism was revered;
those who looked like him—
the n-word they’d still hear
Treated as subhuman
he toils fiercely to earn less
his soul roughened at its edges
must persevere in righteous quest
Restrict him to the ’hood
deceptive paths down which he’s led
send him to the slammer
where he’ll find his unseemly bed
Emancipation? False liberation—
no glory, just strife
as he’s stripped of the prospect
to forge a purposeful life.
Michelle Smith is an award-winning poet and writer. Her essays have appeared in The Sun and Ms. Magazine. A member of the Authors Guild and the Dramatists Guild, her monologue Ode to Jesse was performed in 2024 in collaboration with an award-winning choreographer. Her awards include First Place for humor prose in the 2021 SouthWest Writers competition and First Place in 2024 for poetry. She earned high recognition in the Writer’s Digest 2023 Poetry Competition and the 2019 She Writes Press and SparkPress Toward Equality in Publishing novel competition. You can find her at www.theebonyquill.com and on instagram at thequillster.
And we carry ours.
Our cross is an emblem of suffering and shame,
Pain specifically carved for us to carry.
The wood was cut down from an old tree,
A tree that was scrambled after by thieves.
Our cross carries memories of what it means to be less than human,
Its lore sounds like the swishing of whips before it breaks skin, courage, and bravery.
Our cross is embellished with charms of generational suffering:
A gold chain that our great-great-grandfather got from barter at the slave market.
Our great-grandmother’s wrapper, where she kept the money she got from selling her father’s land,
To have a slice of the white man’s intelligence in her family.
Our grandfather’s journal, where he emptied his confusion about being black and the need to be like the white man.
Our father’s degrees and accolades, which he swore he sacrificed his entire life to get.
Our family heirloom of a life lived on another man’s terms.
Heavy chains of capitalism looped together by a history of compliance and resistance.
We carry our cross as Jesus said,
We carry our cross as the preacher said.
We carry our cross down the aisle, in a white dress,
The piano sounds like shrieking heavy industrial metals; old and weary,
With thousands of eyes staring at us,
Anticipating if we can make it to the altar.
There is fight in my blood.
I am told it is from my journey across the seven seas.
The scars on my back don’t tell half of the tale that the eye saw.
Still, I have kept the essence of my mothers in my chest.
It teaches me to love the earth,
For like it, I am brown and carry the capacity for growth.
It tells me tales of dancing around the fire under full moon nights,
Where mothers told folklore and the men played draughts.
It reminds me of my mother’s unyielding faith in her creator—even if he was carved of stone.
It sings of my skin, luscious like camwood,
A beauty that shines with the luminosity of coconut oil.
Beads on my hips and feet applaud every step I take.
It shows me love and passion,
A fire started by a few coy looks yet committed till the end.
It shows me the divine feminine resting her head on the thighs of her masculine,
It shows me a society where goods were left unattended without fear.
It shows me a time when words were oaths,
And the fear of God made humans act decently.
It showed me strength,
How our men dug holes in the earth and reaped bountiful harvests,
And our hands delicately weaved and carved,
It tells me of really sunny days and heavy rains.
It tells me of resilience, faith, love, and duty.
It tells me that I am enough.
The maidens have come out to dance tonight,
Waist beads gyrating to the intoxicating sound of talking drums.
Anklets are adorned on our feet, while our legs create a symphony.
Today we celebrate in the face of uncertainty.
They say death shall come tomorrow.
When it comes, we shall beat the drums so loud that death will dance with us.
We shall soak the soil with hot gin;
Even sorrow shall be intoxicated.
The movement of our hips will leave death entranced.
The melodies of our voices shall pique the sun’s curiosity.
Down it would come to shine its light on us,
Its reflection against our skin blinding our enemies.
Prophecy said our waists held the answers,
So tonight we shall dance.
We shall let joy seep into us till we are lush like dew on green leaves at dawn.
We shall become one with our creator,
Ushering in a new season,
As we let waists gyrate to the beat of the drums.
Olubukola Odusanya is a poet, fiction writer, and illustrator. She holds a
B.A. in History from the University of Ibadan. She is passionate about
writing stories that document the richness of her culture and sparking
conversations to improve the African psyche. Find her on instagram and twitter/X @bukolathecreato and on Medium at Olubukola.A.
I am living on a love borrowed
in a home I’m too broke to own
See how the filth fills the acres of cold
day-by-day, like voices queuing for a vote;
arguing the best of the slaughterhouses’ regime?
Our bodies accrue roadside in a tally
of insanities born of tenements Jozi East
like city deep, stories the same –
leaving me nostalgic for rondavels again.
The coalitions are dead set on fumigating the being
of senses, reason & dream till there are no brighter days.
All around, necklaced freedom
plays favour-the-least-of-the-grim.
Meanwhile borrowed warmths,
and the occasional bluest of skies,
push past the greys, that is…
the hope of broken homes
Mthabisi Sithole,a poet and writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa, has presented poetry performances through various platforms including TPO x Chris Soal’s 2016 Fees Must Fall intervention, Lephephe Print Gatherings 1, Urban Zulu poetry, and Word Art – Young Voices poetry series. Mthabisi’s published work is included in publications such as Teesta Review: A Journal of poetry, Ja. Magazine, Best New African Poets 2019 Anthology, Yesterdays And Imagining Realities: An Anthology of South African Poetry (2020) and the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology (2023). Find Mthabisi on Instagram at @nodiction and on Facebook at MthabisiSithole.
Given the history of the Black Being,
there is a need to address the pain off of which society has been feeding.
Its history is full of trauma, negation, and neglect.
This is the reason for its deep-rooted mental unrest.
The denial of its pain on the American terrain has further influenced its ability to remain sane.
Become sane?
Move further away from the insanity of a society that denies its humanity.
Its relationship with itself is managed by another.
This depraved entity turns it into the “other”.
It becomes inferiorized by that which deems itself superior.
Drafted into an existential war of contrition with the nature of its existence.
Falling on the butt of “upright” swords on society’s hegemonic floor.
Attempts at the corporeal obliteration of its ontological core.
The pretense it has been indoctrinated to hide behind diminishes its self-concept, further
denigrated in a society rife with moral contempt.
Unable to uproot its identity from the society that denies its murderous intent.
Given the history of the Black Being,
there is a need to address the pain off of which society has been feeding.
The healing that society has been denying that Black folk have been needing.
Begging and Pleading.
Kneeling and Bleeding.
The keys to behold their own cathartic realizations,
the achieved goal of accepting the gifts of their emotional reparations.
To be the redeemed of an earth that denigrated and sullied its ontological, epistemological, and metaphysical conceptualization.
Eddie Bennett is a transformative poet and writer. He is a Washington, DC native who enjoys writing poetry as a mental health practice for wellness and creative therapeutic expression. He also uses poetry as a way to advocate for others to begin to use different forms of creative expression for their own therapeutic benefits.
Jackson Snell lived for his morning coffee, his routine, his ritual. Growing up on a truck farm with his parents, younger brother, and sisters in rural Alabama, he cultivated this penchant for morning coffee. It traveled with him to Chicago, some forty years ago. At sixty-seven years of age, it stayed with him. This daily routine fortified his resolve that his decision to accept a transfer forty years ago was the right one.
Now he lived in East Lake View, not a swanky neighborhood, but lovely nonetheless. As he walked through the doors of his neighborhood coffee shop, a warm greeting waited as it did every morning.
“Hey, Jackson, how are you this morning?” asked the young barista.
“Jest fine, Mindy, jest fine. How ‘bout y’all?”
“Can’t complain. The usual?”
“Sho’ ‘nuff. Like they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But maybe this once get me one of them lemon squares today.”
“You got it.”
After paying for his coffee with a generous tip, he settled into his favorite window seat. The morning traffic on Clark Street punctuated a smile across his face.
He settled into city life with such ease it surprised him; he made friends and grew to love it. It took a while, but he managed to even switch his allegiance from the Braves to the White Sox and didn’t find the designated hitter rule the evil he always thought it to be.
His smile broadened as his mind drifted back to those hard scrabble days on the farm. It wasn’t a longing for the good old days, but it was for the change his life had taken. Like they say, ‘Life is good’.
Retired now, he found his life a lot more than good — morning coffee and this afternoon at the zoo with his grandkids. What could be better? Life was damn good, he thought.
While he sat contemplating his life and how good he had it, he didn’t notice the attractive, matronly woman enter the shop, go to the counter and order tea. Jackson paid no attention to her, until she sat at his table directly across from him.
A quick glance around the shop revealed a half dozen empty tables, but here she sat right opposite him at his window table. She placed her purse to her left, grasped her tea in both hands, and took a deep sip, closing her eyes to enjoy the warmth drifting down her throat.
Looking up, Jackson saw an attractive older Black woman, not as old as himself, but north of fifty. Soft, hazel eyes, no make-up, a pale-yellow blouse with no jewelry completed the picture. Her smile beamed, yet it seemed shallow and forced.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but do I know you?”
“That truly saddens me, Mr. Snell. Of all the folks that done crossed yo’ path, surely, I thought you’d remember me; Viola McBee.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have no recollection of that name, or such a lovely face.”
“Well, maybe this will jog ya’ll’s memory some.” As she reached into her purse, Jackson took a sip of his coffee. When he looked back up, Viola McBee dead aimed her small .25 automatic at his face.
She pulled the trigger twice. The impact of the shots threw Jackson out of his seat and onto the floor. Viola McBee nestled her gun onto the table and resumed her tea.
Two hours later she sat in an interview room at the thirteenth precinct. Her hands folded demurely on the table in front of her, her expression calm and unruffled, at peace. As the detectives watched her, the only items that seemed to be missing were white gloves, a pillbox hat, and a bible.
Detectives Frank Lintelli and Martha Stanton observed for a while. Viola said little more than to confirm her name and address.
“I don’t get it. Mr. Snell was overheard telling you that he didn’t know you, yet you shot him to death. I don’t get it.”
“Mr. Snell misspoke. He knew me, he just didn’t remember me.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Stanton. “Did you know he was planning to take his grandkids to the zoo later on today? What if they were there?”
This seemed to jolt her back to the present. She stared at the interrogators. “I would have waited. He had grandchildren?”
“Yes, but thanks to you, they don’t have a grandfather anymore.”
“It would seem so, but they didn’t need this one. No, not this one.”
“The family will never be the same. Never.”
“Happens to the best of families, don’t it? Look, I done what I done and ain’t gon’ apologize for it neither.”
“We’re beginning to get that, but the question still remains: why did you do it?”
When the words were out of the detectives’ lips, Viola’s eyes averted theirs, tears formed in hers, the hazel color shrouded with moisture. She reached into her blouse and brought out a small, unsealed envelope and plopped it on the table.
“This be my answer to your ‘why’.”
Martha Stanton handled the envelope as if picking up a double-edged razor; she gingerly opened it. Inside she found a folded, yellowed newspaper clipping — a small article and picture. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. Lintelli reached over and took it from her hand.
“Jesus!” he said.
The article was an explanation of the picture. It was a lynching in Coffee County, Alabama, August 1968; White people standing around; men, women, children as if at a Fourth of July picnic. Drinking from cups and bottles, smiling, eating snow cones. No caption, no explanation under the photo, just two figures circled.
A black man hung from a tree; his neck elongated, his tongue purpled and swollen, bulging out his mouth, his pants pulled down around his ankles, the lower half of his body drenched in blood.
“They done hung my Daddy. That be August 1968. Them circled pictures be Mr. Jackson Snell and his buddy, Caleb Potter.”
“They lynched your father?”
“Yes, suh, they surely did.”
“Why?”
She threw both detectives a glance that revealed to them how stupid their question was.
“’Cause it was 1968, Coffee County, Alabama. Cain’t you read? That’s all the reason they needed, but they did have another.”
Lintelli glanced once again at the photo. “Why just kill Mr. Snell? I mean it looks like there were a lot of participants here.”
“Maybe ‘cause everybody there didn’t rape my Daddy’s eleven-year-old daughter, his only daughter; only Jackson Snell and Caleb Potter.”
Viola’s bottom lip quivered; the tears poured out now. “They raped me. They yanked me off the road. I was comin’ home from the store. They took me back in the swamp and took turns.
“When they had they fill, they let me go, tellin’ me they’d be back when I got older and learnt some things ‘cause they loved them some dark meat. I can still hear them laughin’ as they drove off.”
“I tol’ my Daddy and his mistake was he went and tol’ the sheriff. That sheriff went and tol’ them dirt farmer Snells. Next thing I know is they breakin’ in our house and draggin’ my Daddy out.”
“As they was draggin’ my Daddy out, my Mama held me back. I was cryin’, screamin’, and beggin’ them not to. That’s when Mr. Jackson Snell turned, smiled, and winked at me. That’s also when I knew this day would come.”
She lowered her head, gazing at her lap, then slowly raised it to face the detectives. “So, you say, Mr. Snell had grandkids? Well, I ain’t got none. Aftuh they done what they did, I couldn’t have no kids. No kids fo’ me meant no man evuh looked my way. It was like I was marked since I been eleven. Yes, suh, marked. No man wanted me, but they was no man I wanted aftuh they done, what they did.”
Both Lintelli and Stanton sat there, stunned as if hit by lightning, not knowing what to do or say. After a somber silence, Stanton spoke. “Ms. McBee, I don’t know what to say. I… “
“Don’t fret about it none, sweetheart. I knew what I was doin’ and I knew what the outcome would be, so it ain’t yo’ problem. It’s between me and the Lawd. Hope She will understand.”
“She?”
“One of my last remainin’ hopes fo’ forgiveness.”
As if on cue two uniforms came in to escort Viola McBee away and back to the holding cells. She turned one last time before exiting through the door.
“You might wanna call the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office and clear up a missing person’s report for them. They can find Caleb Potter’s body down by Bryson Creek. That’s where they took me that day.”
“Also tell them they woulda been another, but the devil came up and snatched that sheriff befo’ I could.”
As she left out the door, the detectives sat, each in their own way, trying to define justice and its true meaning.
Arnold Edwards is an author, retired teacher, and coach. He graduated from Quigley South Seminary in Chicago. He holds a BA in history from Southern Illinois University. He has sold eight short stories and is currently working on three novels. He has authored two full-length screenplays and several teleplays, a few of which were for now-canceled shows and three in search of a series. His published stories appear in Black Lace Magazine, Cricket, YAWP Magazine, Downstate Story, Gemini Magazine, Frontier Tales, and Mystery Tribune.
Mixed race
Mixed face
Constant rejection, deflections
When I say my heritage
But I see everyone has a mixed taste
Fusion cuisine – ain’t that bitter and sweet
We like to have inclusion on our tongues
It’s easier to eat than make
As long as they care for a fraction, in a moment in time
They’ve done Diversity Inclusion Equity
Things must die before new beliefs are born
Yes, I’m Caribbean. Yes, there’s a story to tell. No, I don’t have to yell.
Just change the narrative.
We use new language, saying it’s inclusion.
We incorporate new nomenclature into the lexicon.
But ain’t that a funny word, nomenclature
Nomenclature
No men clature
No man’s culture
They barely believe us as their own
I guess unlearning and relearning is too much work
I ate curry with my hands last night
Food tastes sweeter off fingertips
Used chopsticks for dumplings the night before
And held my chopsticks from the top to live a long life
I dunk aniseed bread in pepper pot for christmas.
And I’ll eat pasta with a fork if I need a quick meal.
To be mixed isn’t fixed
I’m constantly learning what my ancestors did for me
The roots deep and twisted
This family tree in the amazon
Amidst colonial industrialization
Tall, strong, and why I breathe.
I am the stories I eat.
Jonathan “JCC” Chan-Choong is a Guyanese-Jamaican-Canadian poet and writer. Influenced by a multicultural/ multiracial background and ancestral stories, his work serves as a conduit towards self-understanding and identity. JCC is an active spoken word performer and workshop facilitator. He has been featured in publications, podcasts, and radio shows nationally and internationally. When not writing his own story, he’s helping socially driven organizations speak theirs as a copywriter. Find him on Instagram at @jayseesee.
Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the 2024 nominations for the Best of the Net Anthology. This list includes writing published between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. Congratulations to the nominees!
Poetry
“reflection” by Matthew E. Henry
“Embargo” by Fabienne Josaphat
“towncrier.” by Dana Francisco Miranda
“Reclamation” by Emma Ofosua Donkor
“Bones Beneath the Plow” by Joel Savishinsky
“O!” by Salimah Valiani
Short Stories
“Number Ninety-Four” by Mehreen Ahmed
“Home Affairs” by Otsile Sebele Seakeco
Creative Nonfiction
“Fading Away” by Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi
“Everything Disappears” by Eraldo Souza Dos Santos
I traced her chapped skin,
now blistered and bruised.
Waiting to be loved again,
for someone to peel back that withered layer.
Waiting for someone to look,
beneath the refuse and rust.
Like a prized fowl fit to roast,
stripped of her riches
and tied in economic despair,
but through unheeded calls
she is plucked and trussed.
The scars of planned failures
scratched deep into her flesh.
She is tired.
A once youthful Eden, now a graveyard.
No truer definition of a Boom and Bust.
Yet as another year passes,
and more of her structures falter,
we, her children, are being left without.
Ignoring her calls.
Blind to every flood and deadly gust.
Blind to what she really needs.
Clinging to a time long since passed.
Too consumed in self-pity to know,
that those who promised aid, never come,
are not benevolent and just.
She is lost, in part by a familiar hand.
More involved in her death, than we would like to admit.
Her memory washed away, right from beneath us.
Everything we had turned to dust.
Kevin Irigoyen Penatello was born on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico). His work focuses on Indigeneity, masculinity, and identity in the LatinX community. His most recent piece, “Don Macho,” was published with Somos en Escrito Literary Magazine. You can find him on instagram at kevinirigoyenpenatello.
She raised the axe. Her grip, inexpert but powerful. The heft of the wooden shaft in her palm, the glint of the flared blade, droplets of rain reflecting the meagre light shining through the clouds. That first sundering had seemed so impossible. A primal roar ripped through her in release as her triceps tightened and loosened and the blade fell with her breath. It didn’t do much damage, but she had all the time in the world for this.
Her strength was depleted from the time she spent in this place already, the months of her life she used to feed this thing in place of her own growth. It could contain her, this patch of land, that was hers. It could encase her human form, just barely, yet with ease consume all she ever was. Her chest heaved, sweat pooling between her breasts as she lifted her arms high again.
The descent split the planter that she had so lovingly made. It was a struggle to separate the axe from where she had lodged it, so she abandoned the weapon and dropped to her hands and knees, fingers groping through the moist soil for roots. She felt the cuts in her fingers responding, pulsing. Fibers of her flesh pulled away from each other, eagerly stretching to split themselves and moisten this earth alongside the rain. The feeling too familiar, she withdrew before the roots latched on to drain more from her. She was here to end this. She yearned for some destruction with her bare hands and pressed her palms together, compressing the head of a buoyant red bloom, the feathered petals slight and delicate; its spiral offshoots usually layered and lifted, rubbed between her hands until they fell away, curled into themselves, with white seams cleaving through the clot of red.
She brushed off her hands, staggered to the communal shed, and found the large shears. They trailed behind her as she returned to her plot. Her blood streaked down the handle as she adjusted her grip. She dug the shears into where her hand had reached and sliced along the rivulets of her blood, opening and closing the blades as if hacking at weeds. They weren’t weeds. She had created something beautiful — at least, to a fresh eye she was sure it would be, but to her these bloated buds were decay even when bursting into bloom, in that moment when they were all potential and wonder. She could find beauty in other things, she knew, at lower cost. She hacked at each exposed bit of root until it was too weak to hold on and the soil released it to her destruction. Uncoupling, extracting, discarding.
As she proceeded, any remaining tightness in her movements released, her attention drawn inwards, her mind in her body. Suddenly, she was gripped by the strong desire to burn these roots and dance on their ashes. She wanted to dance. She carried the shears to the spout and rinsed off her blood into the communal drain before returning them and taking a large fork. With that, she tossed the earth.
Everything she had learned to rear these plants, she used to destroy them; every kind word she had thought to help them grow, she reclaimed for herself. The contraction of the muscles in her thigh, her knee joint swinging forward, her heel pressing down, her biceps finding the strength to pull up; the rhythm — it felt like dancing, like a prayer to herself. And she was so afraid it would feel like sacrilege. At the thought, she let out a laugh. She invited each breath to reach the deepest part of her lungs to mark the moment she carried the feeble stems to the compost, dropped them in; never returned again.
Mon Misir (she/they) is a writer and recovering lawyer based in London, UK. They use their writing to explore facets of their experience as a Black woman, with a speculative bent. When not writing, they enjoy reading, theatre (musical and otherwise) and learning how to wield a longsword. She has won nothing, doesn’t have it together at all and is working on a short story collection titled Am I Supposed To Be Here? This is their first publication. You can find their links at NomOnBooks. You can also find Mon directly on Instagram at nom.on.books and on TikTok at nomonbooks.
We stand in the shadows of silent expectations
Where the complex intersections of our identities
Is not enough to halt the deceiver lurking,
Trying to distort our clarity
Whispering all these shape-shifting falsehoods
About growing up in the hood
In the bounds of certain zip codes
Where the gag to our growth
Are street names and avenues
And you’re looked down upon
Even when people on the other side of the gate
Look just like you
Today, we have chosen visceral silence
And as we tiptoe to peer over the
Tops of your white picket fences
We choose to peel our ears back
To hear the world’s tiniest djembe
Playing just for us
We’ve done the same to our eyes
Your green grass just isn’t as lush anymore
And the veneer of your backyard
Has no way of burying our tenacity too deep
We can’t imagine how the earth aches underneath your feet
And how the blackened and caked nails of our
Ancestors gone to dust weep and
Sigh as you decry
A spoiled bloodline that didn’t have a chance
To rise to the same height as you did
The Great Deceiver has fractured the histories and culture
That weave our realities
But once we realize our neighbors are no kaleidoscope images
Disjointed from just poor choices and bad judgements
We can mirror our hopes and dreams
And maybe we can see each other without the cracks
Regine Jackson is a writer based in Springfield, Massachusetts, specializing in science fiction, horror, and fantasy short stories. She also explores themes of inner-city life, mental health, and womanhood through poetry and prose. In 2022, Jackson received the Straw Dogs Writers Guild Emerging Writer Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the 2024 Massachusetts Bards Anthology, Pán•o•ply, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Red Rose Thorns Lit Mag, A Queen’s Narrative: Heavy is the Crown Anthology and the Reimagining New England Histories Project. For more details, visit reginejackson.com or @theflimsyquill on Instagram.
i.
to the beautiful, flexible gods
amenable and fluid,
to all the gods warped and wefted
on a loom with common thread,
to the clay gods shaped and curved and smoothed,
holding the fullness of grain,
to all the cool gods of fresh running water.
to all the shining gods of lucent, precious stone,
to all the masks of gods danced barefoot in the dust,
to all the gods whose name means: “I am singing the river,”
to the gods of the long and sinuous song.
and always to the gods who look out from the center of your eyes,
and to all the shining gods of air and light and breath,
and then, at last, to the irresistible gods of stillness and silence and death
ii.
the old gods sleep beneath the earth, the very ground is their mantle.
yearly they rise, dream-thick, rubbing sleep from their far-seeing eyes.
they shake the heavy red clay out of their dark, kinked, hair,
wearing nothing but tangled red stories girded around their loins.
we approach them and lay down the sweet-smelling grass,
we offer trays of honey, sweet pomegranates, and wine.
they dine and then they listen, grim, with sympathetic ears –
there is so little time and soon they will slip beneath the earth again.
how do we offer up our prayers and fears?
how do we wear our sadness?
will we burn? and will the Earth?
will water rain down to save us?
is it too late? and is it too late?
is it now forever too late?
I was not born, I was fashioned in a furnace by the hand of a smith.
I was beaten black, fire my cradle, the blazing foundry my home.
I was wrought with the strength of his muscled, ashen arm,
his forehead creased and sweat-drowned, me, the dark tool of his making.
Laminar and ductile I was shaped, pliable, easy to use.
But when worn out by his labours, the ironsmith sleeps abyssal,
my black-winged soul rises, tracing a pattern across the sky.
It touches down shadow-soft to peck at the night-wet grass,
foraging for ground news, of those lives still caught,
imprisoned and chained, tied to the heat of the forge,
and those fleeing with desperate breath, straining for winged flight.
Pauline Peters is a queer African-Canadian writer living in Toronto, the territory of Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Her poems investigate themes of race, myth, ancestry, spirituality, and nature. Her aim is to create poems whose themes combine to create a holistic expression. Her work has been published in The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Salted Woman, was published in Britain by Hedgespoken Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has work forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2025.
The bright morning sun could not take away the chillness of the crisp mountain breeze swollen with the woody freshness of cypress leaves. Tourists in tees, shorts, and fancy western dresses were overflowing on the narrow roads. They smiled standing close to the trees, flowers, name boards and every other little thing they thought unique to the hill station in a desperate hurry to capture them in their mobile cameras. They forgot to enjoy the sights with their eyes and store them in their memories.
The old colonial structure housing a prestigious club of the elite in the heart of town was likewise not spared. Travellers posed for selfies with the building in the backdrop. The security made a stern look dissuading them from venturing into the premises.
“Mr Narayanan asked me to meet him here,” I told the guard.
“There he is,” he said, pointing towards a top-end sedan parked in the lawn of the club house.
A tall slim man who looked fit for his age emerged from the car. What struck me most was the mismatch between the real persona and the image the name had created. He wore his three-piece suit to perfection. His formal black shoes that glistened, his perfectly made necktie tucked into the vest, his brooch styled after the British crown on the lapel of his coat, for a moment, transported me to a ballroom. His hair was immaculately cut with each strand gelled to another. The closely shaven visage and manicured fingernails could impress anyone. He looked every bit an English gentleman, but anachronistic to a milieu where hundreds of tourists thronged the streets in their casual best.
He clasped my hand in a tight grip while his face turned pink with warmth and excitement. A certain energy beyond his age emanated from him and passed on to me. “I am extremely glad you paid a visit,” he said.
“The pleasure is mine.”
He invited me into the club house. “This was built in the 1800’s by the British who would retreat to this hill from the hot sultry weather of Chennai. The structure was strongly built to stay for centuries.” As he pointed towards a plush sofa with the pride of a privileged member of the club, I took a wide look at the large wooden beams and pillars of the British era construction.
“While we talk about freedom struggle and British invasion, we forget the fact that the British have made several contributions in our path towards modernity,” he said. “Look at this hill station. The flora — the Cypress trees, eucalyptus, wattle, acacia, pine and tea are among the vestiges of the colonial era. Balsam, petunia, begonia are just a few among the flowering plants that make this hill station exotic. They painstakingly brought each plant and each seed in their ships from the other side of the globe.”
“From uniting the country to leading it in the path of industrialisation, their contributions cannot be dismissed.” I nodded my head without getting into a debate. “They brought a train up this hill from the plains. We won’t dare do that even today.”
“And this was a club they let Indians in since inception.” His appreciation for what he thought a privilege was immense. “Shall I order tea for you?” He chose to cash that privilege in the form of tea.
He gestured to the waiter to take orders. A few minutes later the manager of the club came closer. “Sorry to interrupt. Can I have a word with you,” she asked him.
“Please excuse me for a second,” Mr. Narayanan said as he walked behind her towards the office.
When he came back, he looked disturbed and embarrassed. “I am extremely sorry. They have a dress code issue. Can we move into another room?” He bent his back a bit and whispered, “My apologies.”
I became aware of my appearance. I wore a blue tee, grey track pants, and two-strap slides. My face displayed stubbles that had sprouted after the previous day’s shave. I was carrying a cheap transparent plastic bag filled with a bunch of carrots freshly bought from a street vendor. I had not made any attempt to ape an English gentleman to enter these premises.
“No worries,” I did not feel inadequate. Instead, I tried to make him feel at ease.
He took me to an adjacent room, which looked like an enclosed corridor. An old wooden table painted with cheap yellow-coloured varnish and a long wooden bench were squeezed into the narrow room. His face remained pale with embarrassment. The waiter brought tea in two glass tumblers similar to the ones used by street-side vendors. He placed the tea on the table and left. I sipped the tea, which was unusually strong for me. My host looked at the tumbler with contempt and refused to touch it. As soon as I finished the tea, he got up and made a phone call.
“My daughter and grandson are coming today from London for a fortnight-long holiday,” he said.
“Oh! Hope you are not late. I shall take leave now,” I got up and shook his hands. His grip was no longer firm, and he lacked the enthusiasm with which he greeted me some time before. I walked past the gate and looked back once again at the British relic.
Sangeetha G is a journalist in India. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in Sky Island Journal, Down in the Dirt, Academy of the Heart, Mind, Kitaab International, Indian Review, Nether Quarterly, Muse India, Storizen, The Story Cabinet, and Borderless Journal. Her stories have won the Himalayan Writing Retreat Flash Fiction contest and Strands International Flash Fiction contest. Sangeetha G’s debut novel, Drop of the Last Cloud, was published in May 2023. You can find her on Facebook as Sangeetha Pillai, on X/Twitter as sangitunes, and on Instagram as san.pillai.
the Decolonial Passage 