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khayelihle benghu poetry february 2024

A burnt offering, or should it be fasting of gold and plenty?

In these hours, last days of hardship

What should we do to keep children out of harm’s way?

Maybe redeem ourselves and prove ourselves crusaders and not instigators of ruin.

Last night I heard the earth cry, tears of rain that flooded skyscrapers and eroded the toughest bridges.

Mouth so wide it swallowed homes whole, schools and roads.

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.

How was life in ancient times when earth was formed and culled from nothing?

Adam lived in Eden, it was life before science and machine

What if we had held back progress and maintained the olden ways?

Simplicity in every form,

from caveman to stone pot.

Would destiny be the same if no civilization ever transpired?

I wonder which road led us here to this fate.

That we became bearer of this hefty cross.

Yesterday I survived the earthquake, today it is a flood and I hear it will be much worse tomorrow.

What of civilization? Should I give up all and return to write on stones?

Today as I reflect on this life, I see that civilization was no work of saints.

My life, what will become of you in reverse times if civilization is done away with?

What sacrifice should we give for this den of dragons where we now have to live?


Khayelihle Benghu is a nurse and a freelancer. She resides in Soweto, South Africa. Her hobbies include drawing and gardening — mostly culinary herbs. She has been writing since 2008, and this is the first time her work has been published. You can find her on Facebook.

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sibani sen poetry february 2024

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul”

and after a long journey, after experiencing the worst others are capable of

after being flung back only

I, exile, find myself waiting at some foreign transit station

waiting to be, long, belong, grow, rooted

I, continent: my hands, eyes, feet, shoulders, knees, mouth

waiting to be held, seen, grounded, spread

I, body, wear, what I pull over my head at night to sleep under

waiting for a roof, blanket, dream to call my own

my child’s hands trace the dirt that remains

some speak of dirt to name 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.


‘scape

the rift is a dream-hoard

ghost presences shimmer in the air

desire gutters over

the lip of the border


they want –who are the they

property, payback, collateral

I long for a waking that remembers

a name, a life


my shadow grows

long with tomorrows

whose oath to stanch the tears

the dead shed only yesterday


death the only truth of the living

the silent stations of the stars

cross over me, shelter is the promise

of the sun in my eye again


my head is not a stone

my words are not bars

“we do not inherit the landscape from our ancestors

but borrow it from our children”


a ticking within and in the distance

sun drifts, grass splits muteness doubles the mind

another shot on the road remnants’ trail

without eyes and tongue, without hands


the earth a cart of limbs

only a shoe remains.

in the quiet of the night the wind

rips holes for me to walk through


Water Writ

Across the sea vowels appear and disappear.

The susurrus of waves lives in your throat of truth.

Your cloud messenger makes a ceaseless passage.

I must listen with iron in my mouth.

I must read the blood gathering at the shore.

Why did you swaddle me in this liquid shroud?

Here is where my inheritance drowns.

I will fill up my heart with what’s lost.


Sibani Sen teaches creative writing and South Asian history. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Saranac Review, Off the Coast, J Journal, Rogue Agent, and SWWIM. She has done collaborative projects with the History Design Studio at the Harvard Hutchins Center, the Concord Museum, the Beacon Street Arts Studios in Somerville, the former Green Street Studio in Cambridge, and the pop-up New Rasa Initiative group at the Public Theater in NYC. Her current projects based on migration and feminism include forthcoming poetry and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra. You can find her at SibaniSen.com.

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christopher rubio-goldsmith poetry january 2024

I just want to invent some new words

because the words I have now do not work.

They just crash around into walls and

sleeping dogs. When I say them in a dark room

it remains that way and outside the wind blows

them down the alley. 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. These new words will fix any

cracks and allow mysteries that help compose

songs and paintings that hang and remind us all


of all of us and our future as us. A new dance

at a shore or in a canyon under the lush.


I want these new words to string out

in the sky; rainbows of letters, comets

of meaning, stars that shape the way we

attend rituals. A new type of security

blanket. A new way to swim in a rushing

river or navigate a trail through a selva.

These words that will guide us all

when we discover our fate

piling up against our will.


Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart nominee, his writings will appear in Drunk Monkeys, Inverted Syntax and have been publishedin Sky Island Journal, Muse, Discretionary Love and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and their two cats seem happy.

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Matthew E. Henry poetry january 2024

she could be my sister. this face

I recognize from every elementary

memory. a face I see in the mirror

beneath the hair, the scars, the slowly

etching wrinkles. the mischievous brow

and open forehead. the nose and cheeks

and smile. the eyes. all ours. but when

I read the title of this gelatin silver print

of a 1950s photograph, the “West Africa”

triggers memories even more somatic.


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 &

peas and jollof rice and that same mouth

unable to say so much to so many gone.


After James Barnor’s Self-Portrait with a Store Assistant at the West African Drug Company, 1952


Black Men and Women in a Tavern

oil on wood, 1650

workshop of David Teniers the Younger


they are not worthy to be painted

because they are unusual, or

because they are free

to sit pensively over bread. free

to drink, to smoke a pipe

without assumptions about

what they contain. free—

in clothes colorful

as their given names,

shades of blue, red,

and white—to talk

shit, raise voices and

exaggerated hands

over a story

without being perceived

as a threat to police

or white women. no.

this is not a suburban starbucks,

a cookout in a public park,

deck chairs beside the pool.

this is Antwerp. 1650.

they are worthy

simply because

they are.


casually and casualty share a Latin root

      “You don’t build your whole life around brutality by mistake.

      You have to want that. You have to plan that.”

              ~ Fairview, Jackie Sibblies-Drury


we all know the story. Stella Liebeck, age 79,

spilled a hot cup of McDonald’s coffee. it soaked

her cotton sweatpants and burned away 3 degrees

of muscle and fatty tissue. after 8 days of skin grafts—

reconstruction of inner thigh, labia, perineum—

she begged for $20k to cover the lost 16% of skin.

McDonald’s—of course—refused. having settled

over 700 similar claims, they had to take a stand.

make an example.


no one wants to be seen as the bad guy, the villain.

even the super-rich in those slasher films, with their

killing-people-fetishes and fucking-people-up-fetishes.

when they cut off fingers with chainsaws, or lock

co-eds in basements with hammers and bleach to fight

for their lives, they have justifications for keeping

their victims dirty and screaming and crying and scared—

brown and bleeding. it seems we enjoy them—the movies

keep being made. are acceptable as something that happens.


court proceedings reveled the corporate strategy:

franchises ordered to serve drive-thru coffee

at 200 degrees. their lawyers argued the benefit

for commuting customers. after bites of Egg McMuffin

and hash brown, their black slurry would be hot,

but not tongue-scalding, by the time they arrive

at work. the system worked as designed.


Chomsky said it’s impossible to knee-crush a neck

while calling yourself a true son of a bitch. villains

always have their rationalizations.  they argue

there are no “victims”—not really. we seem to agree.

the Dred Scott decision. the Indian Removal Act.

the Greaser Act. the Chinese Exclusion Act. the black codes.

the Insular Cases. redlining. the New Deal exclusions.

Korrematsu. the southern strategy. the war on drugs.

the Clinton crime bill. gerrymandering. redistricting. trump

v. Hawaii. SFFA v Harvard. we seem content knowing

it just keeps happening—in different ways—as designed.


Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, and associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes and Rise Up Review. The 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Prize, MEH is published in Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH is an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground. On twitter/X find him at @MEHPoeting.

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Eaton jackson poetry january 2024

circles

birthing across the demure blue of island sea,

lucky throw of empty beer bottle by  a sad, ragged boy on the pier. Ships

unmoored, dragging their anchor up for tv. cities.  tv. countries      boy, looking on.

silhouetted picture of life imitating art,


happiness construct its own smile, its own castles

on naked, red unashamed dirt,

places stumbled upon, Transmuted into

comfort, reclining between thistles, rocks, A pillowed backpack

dreaming bigger dreams of  a better home,


washed away by dreaming, familiarity is felt for      cracked off piece of

recessed switch, in an electric room suspended from main grid,

Home,  labored moan, of mythical places where ships on hunting

safaris, capture what was free, caged trophies,


Home, a howl for more hallucinogens,

a cardboard bed in Manhattan, a scream, as the homeless is carted

away, and city’s gold street is scrubbed, washed of the infringement,


Home. Underpass stumbled upon

                  under


big bridge, New graffiti about mythological repatriation to a moment gone,

Home. A lazy hammock,

languid between coconut trees,

Home. Thousands of miles across thousands of seas….


Eaton Jackson is Jamaican and a naturalized American citizen. He has been writing for most of his adult life. In his writing, he aspires to be worthy of publication and to be read. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Tuck Magazine, The New Verse News, Scarlet Review, Querencia, and Passage Journal.

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Richard de-graft Tawiah flash nonfiction january 2024

This tongue will never force words from a body that wants to remain shut. But I am packing in things you will need for the journey. I feel the heaviness of your secrets. Pin in strength and ask if this is what people want to help you carry. No, it’ll kill them, I say. It’s better you don’t say it. Some parts of me still believe you deserve saving. You deserve any ear that wants to listen, so I cut in. (And this is painful.)

I find you crying, and this is almost like a home I’ve lived in before. I find familiar paintings I left on the wall—stretches of red colours, begging me to stop, begging me to leave, begging me to wait. When it hurts to share, it hurts to even find solace in the eyes of people who will genuinely help ease the pain. When it hurts to share, we do not know if we want to share or not. We do not know when you have to leave because some parts of us will want you to stay.

I’ve been here before. Exactly what the others tell you. But when I tell you this is not a good place to rent, trust me, I do not say this to comfort you. I say this to tell you that there will only be a burial after a burial, a funeral with no song, and on days when you can’t let go of what is to be left gone, you will run back digging to reach the corpse of everything that burns your nose, of everything that will make you close your mouth shut while you want to vomit. (And this is painful.)

And that’s too much heaviness for you to carry. That is too much pain. That is too much for your eyes to hold in. 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. (And this won’t be painful.)


Something New

Whatever happens in the womb of a woman is a time capsule, and I am told it’s the man who puts everything there.

He tills the grounds, ploughs, wets each side and plants the seeds. Every sweat that breaks loose from his face is water to quench his thirst for the hard work he does.

The woman holds everything in until a labour is due, and I’m told this is done with pain. Pain is the only belt one wears to create something new. They do all this with their hands and hold on until the time of harvest.

I want to ask them why they do this—I won’t say they do this for pleasure. I want to know how long they intend to love their fruits—I won’t say forever; it depends. I want to ask them if they think only about themselves when they argue. I want to know if they feel the pain they cause to other lands when they set theirs on fire. I won’t call the shots. I won’t say the children; the fruits and the farmlands have a lot to say, a lot to ask, and a lot to know about what happens during the farming season.

I’ll be quiet. I’ll have my peace. I’ll let them wonder what their pain does to us.


I Am Nothing But Rust

People perceive I have the strength of a wall, and anytime they want to build trust, they use me as a pillar. In their conversations, they mention my name as a verb. A sure ticket to get the work done. An assurance. A soothing tap on the shoulder, the blues in their skies. The star that waits beside the moon.

The wind comes knocking, and I’m supposed to hold still, bleed where I am cut, and break the mouth that wants to shout this pain away into smiles because I can’t afford to let anyone down. And imagine if we wore our intentions like handbags. I bet people would really see how often I give up.

How often I tire of being a punching bag that sleeps over and over every night for another round of training because it needs to be there for others and not itself.

I’m that thing that will fit in every bag. Like a comb or a perfume, or anything that stays to be used.

And they say the value of a thing is in its usefulness, but what they don’t say is that every useful thing must be treated with compassion for it not to lose its colour. And here, I’ve lost my colours, and I am nothing but a rust writing you a poem. I am nothing but rust, reminding you to give me back my shine.


Richard De-Graft Tawiah is a creative writer, spoken word poet, and LLB graduate from Central University. He is a 2022–2023 Nadèli Creative Cafe Bootcamper. He’s fueled by his passion for words and the change they bring. His journey includes volunteering at the Foundation for Educational Equity and Development where he channels his love for community service through literacy and youth empowerment. He also volunteers at Nadéli Creative Company on the Book of the Month Team. His works are published and forthcoming at the Global Writers Project, Ghanaian Writers, Nadèli Creative Company, and elsewhere. Find him on instagram at richydegraft, on Facebook at Richard De-Graft Tawiah, and on LinkedIn at Richard De-Graft Tawiah.

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ewa gerald onyebuchi personal essay january 2024

November 2023: Trans-ekulu, Enugu.

All my life I have viewed death at arm’s length, through the lens of a stranger. Even the death of other family relatives smelled differently, almost like a faraway thing. But when I think about my parents, I wonder the colour grief would assume when they exit this earth. When it finally strikes home, would death take on a smell too putrid for catharsis? Would grief succeed in stealing the rooms in my body, becoming too intimate to eject?

*

A light rain patters down the roof of our house while I thumb through an old album of pictures. I am sitting in one of the four black sofas, tucked in a rectangular ring. I don’t know if this is my mother’s favourite chair, but she never fails to plop down on it whenever she strolls into the living room. I believe when someone does something or uses a thing, unconsciously, over time, that action or thing becomes a vital part of them. Just like this sofa has become a repository of my mother’s body, imbibing her scent and warmth. The sofa sits on the left, beside a glass center table, directly opposite the TV plastered to the wall. It’s a privilege to take my mother’s seat, to rock my body against the spaces she’s been. At this point, I stop fiddling with the pages, and close my eyes. Instead of me, I imagine her on this chair, and train my ears to the gentle tap of her hands on the arms of the chair. On most evenings after a shower, my mother wears a faded blue and black patterned wrapper. Even now, I picture the wrapper flung around her body and inhale the dry muskiness that speaks of age.

Mama, a retrenched bursar, is not dead. She’s in Abuja, with my father, who works with the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development. 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. My father is 5.8 feet, taller than my mother, and he wears a dark skin, while my mother is the colour of ripe pawpaw. Both have fairly large noses to accommodate their round faces; unlike Papa, Mama has a pair of beautiful bright eyes. But sadly, these features are slowly eroding with the passage of time. My mother’s hair is now glazed with specks of white, and unlike her, my father wears a cleanshaven head and beard, as if he’s determined to make a case against nature, a demand for his youth. In the pictures, my parents’ bodies have witnessed a series of metamorphoses. There’s a picture of them, taken when their eyes were full of light and ardor. A time when they wore their afros with style, thick and glossy, and grinned. Against a black and white background, Papa can be seen sporting an afro, a craggy beard and a pair of bootcut trousers. He poses in front of a tree, his arm resting on the shoulder of another man in afro. There’s a tenderness to my mother’s pose: the tilt of her head to one side, the smile on her face, the graceful arch of her back as she plants a hand on her waist, her knee-length gown devoid of pleats. In today’s world, their pose could be tagged prosaic and their clothes too simple to meet the new wave of high fashion taste.

There are other pictures of my parents taken at different places and events. Some of them make me laugh, smile and cry at intervals. I hold a picture against the light and blink back hot tears. It was probably taken in 2013, but the memories are fresh as dew. Somewhere in Kogi State, we are standing in front of a church building, posing before a camera: our parents and three brothers, my sister and I dressed in white beside the Bishop clad in a purple vestment. We have just been confirmed, newly conscripted soldiers of Christ, and everyone else is radiant with smiles except me. I don’t know how to smile before a camera and each time I force it, my face comes out squeezed. I remember that day, the sun boiling over our heads, the sweat dribbling down my face as the photographer urged me to smile a little, and my parents glaring at me.

Years later, I wish I had smiled. I wish I wasn’t a mimosa plant, always shutting myself out of the world, away from my parents each time they stepped into my space. Growing up, love was measured in small dosages and passed around. When we greeted our parents, we added sir or ma, thanked them after every meal, chanted“Daddy welcome, Mummy welcome”, following their return from work or the market. There were no hugs. It wasn’t a taboo to hug our parents or siblings, but it could be viewed as perfunctory, too elastic to be real. Our parents were the adults I was first introduced to early in life, and without the strings of cordiality properly binding us together, I saw them only as parents—people who had decided to be married, have children, protect them and provide their needs. I didn’t fully understand the reason for the chasm between my parents and me or my sudden withdrawal each time they tried to reach out, to show affection. Perhaps, it had something to do with the countless times they fought in our presence without a speck of regard for us, their children, our feelings. Or the moments Papa launched vile words at Mama from the quiver of his mouth that ran like a faulty tap, unashamedly, even while we pleaded with him to stop. Maybe I couldn’t comprehend how two individuals, living under one roof, could become depositories of distinct attributes. How they could so easily morph from the sweet-loving couple they had been moments ago into ravenous wolves determined to tear each other to smithereens.

Still, one thing stood out among us: our love for the mundane. Like telling stories or spending the whole weekend huddled in front of the screen, watching Africa Magic or Telemundo (despite my love for both gradually fading away). My parents, especially Mama, fed us with stories of people, places and moments in their past life. She told us about the Biafran war, how some people fled their homes in terror, and those who could not escape the onslaught ended up as dead bodies lining the streets of Okigwe. How a mother had flung her crying baby into the bush to escape being seen by the soldiers and returned hours later to find the spot where she had thrown the child empty. The baby was gone.

My growing up was bushwhacked by bouts of illnesses that ate into my time for school and house chores. Yet, I remember being struck by malaria and fever at the same time. It was so profound that I was confined to my bed for days, only wriggling off to the toilet to vomit. I thought I was going to die. One evening, the door squealed open, and my father walked in.“Imeriagha?” he said. “How is your body?”I could barely nod or open my mouth. His eyes were laced with fear as he asked if I had vomited again, and I nodded my response. He leaned in and touched my head and said my body was too hot. It felt awkward, his hand on my body, his outright display of warmth and affection, the way he said “ndo.” I was so used to my mother’s touch—her hand running down my body, as if trying to massage the hotness away, her measure of love—that his felt alien.

*

Over the years, the gulf between my parents and me has congealed into walls; so, I’m making a deliberate effort to break through them. I am 27 and still living with my mother. As a teacher working at a private school, it’s almost suicidal to plant my hope on monthly salary. After school, I scuttle from house to house for home lessons, because I’m trying to make ends meet. Because I’m so passionate about being successful, and because I want to be available for my parents. To help oil their path towards senescence, to support them financially just as they’ve done for me.

Despite all these, I try to carve out time to be with my family; and although it’s difficult to fully comprehend my parents when they talk, I provide a listening ear. Where needed, I humour their dry jokes, cringe at the death of an old friend, stifle the urge to lash back at my father when he insults me. I don’t blame them when they fail to recall what I told them some days ago. Neither do I remind them of the staleness of their stories. On second thought, who gets tired of old wine?

Maybe everything happening to my parents—the sudden loss of memory, the stories they tell that sound like songs on repeat—is all part of the ageing process. But I’m scared of losing them. In the pictures, I compare their lives from whence they started to where they are, and I feel so hog-tied at the hapless reality of their slipping away. I scroll through my phone’s gallery and pause at a photo of them standing beside my younger brother, dressed in a convocation gown. This picture is the most recent I have of my parents, and I can’t help but imagine how stilted they look from those wrinkled lines, how fragile the smiles on their faces appear, the exhaustion on my mother’s face. It’s mentally tiring to picture a moment when their smiles, faces and voices would become bags of memories I’d have to carry throughout my life.

*

Two months ago, Mum slipped off a flight of stairs at the back of the house and twisted an ankle. Whenever I remember this incident, how I had been absent from home when it occurred, my heart hammers against my chest. Sometimes I imagine a different scenario: what if her head had landed heavily against the block of cement and not her hands? What if she lay on the ground, still, her eyes wide with tears, blood oozing out of a gash in her skull, the world moving on without her?

The X-ray showed that she sustained a fracture, and the doctor suggested a bed rest. Still, Mama has a resilient spirit. “I’m healed in Jesus name, no need for any bed rest. That doctor thinks I’m going to return to that hospital. God forbid!”she says each time I beg her to take it easy on herself. Then, my father calls to complain about his sight failing him, perhaps cataract, and he wants to go under the knife. I don’t tell him that I hope he doesn’t have the surgery, that I’m scared of losing him. Instead, I pray for him to be healed so he doesn’t have to go under the knife.

Nowadays, I know I have no control over anything: my parents’ complaints, the fear of losing them to the cold grip of death before I finally find my balance in this shifting world.

In “The Slipping Away,”Chinonso Nzeh concludes his essay on a brighter note, stating his resolution to live in the moment that includes his parents.“I want to enjoy the now with them. Every moment with them holds meaning for me. I count one to ten when they provoke me; it cools the burning fury in me. I ask them if they need water or food. I call them to check up on them.”

Just like Chinonso, I do my best to live in the moment with my parents. I don’t wait for birthdays or any such precious occasions in their lives to gift them presents; I do it before, when the means unfurl. I strive to make them laugh while I continue to fill my head with the possibility of having them alive for many years. I choose to bask in the euphoria of their joy, laughter and tears.


Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi is an Igbo storyteller from Nigeria. He writes short stories, essays and poems with deep interest in feminism, sexuality, queerness and religion. His works have been published in Isele, Afritondo, Uncanny, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere. He was long listed for the Abubakar Gimba Prize for Creative Nonfiction 2023 and the Brigitte Poirson Short Story Prize 2023 amongst others. 

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fabienne josaphat poetry january 2024

Four a.m. My father is out looking for gasoline.

Night at this hour is a tangle of hair,

a bush only the gifted seers can navigate.

This is also where I was radicalized.

On my television screen, I watch Bill Clinton

introduce my people to rations. I watch him

change our rice to another kind.

We begin to import democracy and then,

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.


Four a.m. Another day of tires

and cars charred at the crossroads.

The charcoal sings in the gaping

Mouth of a hot iron, and the steam

Kills everything but the linen.

We learn to live like this.

To make fire from the slivered bark of pinewood.

To slaughter and use all of the animal.

To drink its blood or fry its curdles

So that the weak can be saved

From anemia. We turn to cassava bread

And coffee. We find ways. We survive.

They must not know us.


Four a.m. A child was kidnapped

For ransom and never seen again.

The sun seems to have lost its luster.

The children are not safe and therefore

no one is safe. Nothing is sacred.

Not the holy water nor the frankincense,

not the songs nor the processions,

not the libations poured too late for spirits

we have neglected for so long to feed.

There is always plenty of time

Until there isn’t. We’ve forgotten the time.

We rest our bones for tomorrow,

We wake up and start all over again,

Roaming the streets for petrol at four a.m.


Fires Burning

Too many fires burning at once.

Every commentary on T.V. does nothing

more than stoke the flames.

Paper ignites right around 451 degrees.

Water boils at 212. Do we know

the exact temperature at which

to rescue a man from a burning tire?

Rescue a monk from self-combustion?

Rescue a people from self-immolation?

We who have lost faith

And land and voice and agency,

We who have chained ourselves to olive trees

We who have seen our lakes

Burn up in black smoke and breathed

The air to die, we

Who were told to chop down our trees

And bury our elders with our teeth,

We who heeded the command

and felled our own memories:

We who continue to burn demand only

The kindness of sipped water.

Everywhere, a fire burns.

Every single one of us

is running out of blame.


The Way You Are Loved

You know, the way you enter the house

And the pot had been simmering in wait,

And your mother holds your face in both hands

And you can inhale all the powder fresh scent,

That honeysuckle from her bosom, and you want to live there.

The way your grandfather wraps you in

The cotton of his voice, warms you up in earthy breath,

And feeds you pulp and nectar from the fruits of his labor,

And sits you on his lap to spin you a tale

From a motherland country so far and far away it sounds fantastical,

invented, imagined, a myth like all the others,

a fairytale built out of sea salt and constellations,

The breath of Gods who crossed the oceans.

You know the way this place keeps you bound,

tied to the umbilical cord so you’re never too far away.

In Guinea There is where it all started, where this love was born.

In Guinea Where your parents sit by the fire and send you

Signals in the smoke, and a man to love, a woman to hold,

a child or three or eight and keep that fire burning for all of them

To keep going and find their way back home.


Fabienne Josaphat is winner of the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and the author of the forthcoming novel Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin). Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Her publications include poems in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Grist Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, and Eight Miami Poets, as well as essays in The Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She is currently at work on a third novel. Find her at @fabyjosaphat and on both instagram and X/twitter.

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gorleku sampson tetteh epistolary december 2023
Image by Gorleku Sampson Tetteh

Dear Mr. President,

I am a photographer with huge concerns for the environment. Please allow me to tell you a story about my Mama’s village.

You see, once upon a time, in the middle of the village, there existed a huge forest called Python-Forest. The forest seemed to bother the people in the village because it was home to many animals including some enormous African pythons. From time to time the pythons came and stole livestock, poultry, and the like belonging to the people of the village. One day they agreed to get rid of the pythons.

In doing so, they cleared the whole forest. It was a good bounty – trees were to be used as firewood, forest game as food, and extra land was acquired for agricultural purposes. In the end, everyone thought it was needed and mostly for the best. Decades later, somebody thought and realized that it did not rain like it used to. Years later, someone else thought and realized that when the pythons were around, it rained heavily. And in the rainwater, the pythons came from the forest for their livestock and poultry. Ah! The python-forest was no more! Nor was the rain.

You see Mr. President, the fruits and rewards of nature’s existence are enjoyed together by all. 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. You would agree that the distribution of our nation’s wealth is unfair and unequal. You should agree because the masses agree, and agreement amongst the masses is the most powerful, more powerful than the office you occupy. It is my prayer that the masses know this.

Mr. President, I would like to bring to your attention the quarrying activities going on in Shai Hills. The activities going on in Shai Hills is a crime against nature punishable by death. Judging according to “an eye for an eye”, the activities are killing the people and destroying the beauty of our land along with it — the land our forefathers fought to protect, only to be destroyed by selfish individuals and for profit.

Mr. President, I am a photographer who has fallen in love with the beauty of our landscape. Have you seen the magnificent inselbergs at Shai Hills? To look upon them when they appear silhouetted in front of an enchanting sunset sky is truly magical. Please, pause for a moment and try to picture that. You will be left in absolute awe of our God. It really is a magical place to be.

Here is the problem: the quarry dust is clogging the lungs of men, women, and children in these communities. The quarries are too close to the people. Have these humble citizens been condemned to death? Must they rise up against you like their forefathers did against the colonial masters before the quarries stop?

The quarries are leaving big holes in the earth. How would you feel if you were living with a big hole in your tummy? The earth is alive, Mr. President, and right now it is dying with all her beauty.

You see Mr. President, though you should, we do not think you know of everything that is happening on our land. Given that countries have suffered the effects of quarrying and now have to invest billions into restoring the land, your experts will tell you this is true. Why then are we going the same way? Please tell us how it benefits our country and her people to allow those historical inselbergs in Shai Hills to be reduced to rubble? Tell us with every shred of honesty in you, Sir. If it’s the money, then I can tell you there’s always another way, as one would tell a criminal. And the way we are going as a country is an unpardonable crime against nature. Shai Hills holds unearthed history; lives have been lived atop the inselbergs; discoveries are yet to be made; the professors are out overseas seeking more wealth. Money seems to be ruling the world, and we have become the weapons of destruction of this earth.

By executive order you can end this. Declare the Shai Hills resource reserve a national park. That will expand the reserve’s land space and then the quarry licenses will be rendered invalid. Just like that. That should be the end of the wicked who destroy the land. It is what the people want. Your experts will tell you it is the right thing to do. You would then go on to plant trees to replace the quarries because trees protect the land, as the hair protects the head and its contents. The trees will heal the earth and clean the filthy air in the city, which is only 45 minutes away. You see, a huge, concentrated number of trees in a national park at Shai, just 45 minutes from the capital, is bound to attract a lot of our shit called co2 away from the city. The trees need the co2, hence they will attract it. They go for it, kind of like we also go in search for food. That is what trees do.

Let’s face it Sir, the capital stinks! If it didn’t, once in a while you’d find yourself turning off your a/c and rolling down your windows to inhale the fresh air (if any). Let us not leave the stench to only the windowless troskies. And outside of the cities, God knows there are limitless untarred road networks, even in Shai where the historical inselbergs are destroyed for construction purposes.

I have asked my fellow citizens what is up with the fighting in parliament? Have we elected a babbling, bumbling, band of baboons? Shouldn’t they be united in building our nation?

Mr. President, as Ansel Adams once said, “It is indeed horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save our environment”. This means the governed are fighting amongst themselves, and Christ the Savior of the Christians as the “Christians” in this country love to put it, said that “a nation that fights against itself shall not stand”. We want to stand tall, Mr. President, and we believe you do too.

Mr. President, if you really care about being a true son of the land, start acting in benefit of the environment. Make that executive order now! Stop the activities that are destroying the historical inselbergs at Shai Hills.

Our youth shall be employed to plant trees to heal the land. Hell, if they won’t, the world will send volunteers to do so if need be. God knows they want to come!

The quarrying will eventually bring down the Shai Hills resource reserve. I have witnessed the rocks atop the inselbergs cracking over time. It is just a matter of time before they come rolling down. People from all walks of life come to climb them all year round, people from countries where they are immensely cared about. We need to start caring, Mr. President, in order to prevent a disaster from happening. Better safe than sorry. It will ruin our reputation as one of the tourist hotspots. Tourism is the new gold anyway. Stop the quarrying and turn to it. That will yield more money since that is what we want. And it will protect the earth in the process.

 Abandoning a well-paying job to photograph our landscape has taught me that money for daily bread is essential. I believe the same for my country. Destruction isn’t the way; doing the right thing is. By doing the right thing, we are brought face to face with the help we need. Photographing landscapes is the right thing for me, just as protecting the land from vampires is the right thing for you to do.

Mr. President, I hang on to hope that you shall act to stop the mindless quarrying at Shai Hills. Always know that three things will last forever: faith, hope and love. Love is the greatest. Move for love, Mr. President. God loves all, he is more favorable to one who loves.


Tetteh Unity

Afterword

My photographs convey the simple yet wonderful beauty of nature that nature gifts us season after season. In the rainy season, trees blossom and bear fruit; the fields turn green; wildflowers bloom bringing with them beautiful insects like bees and butterflies; the sky is blue and snow-white clouds appear, travelling across the sky from east to west.

The trees shed their leaves in the dry season, teaching us that we have to change with the season. Bare naked trees become beautiful portrait subjects with a background of an enchanting December sunset sky.

We tend to miss nature’s gift of beauty due to our now busy lives, or worse because of urban and industrial development. In a hundred years, man has changed the face and beauty of the earth more than nature has changed herself. Entire forests destroyed; whole mountains brought down. We have polluted bodies of water killing the life in them, made filthy our shores, and the list continues.

Nature is our best chance at emotional and physical survival, yet we destroy her. Are we not harming ourselves? Poisoning ourselves by our own thoughtlessness and greed?

Ansel Adams (God bless his soul) once wrote, “Since all life and it’s continuity are dependent upon the earth, our ultimate security must rely upon wisdom, compassion, determination and the awareness of the unity of man and nature.” I agree.


Gorleku Sampson Tetteh is a Ghanaian and a landscape photographer from the Kingdom of Kasunya who is deeply in love with nature’s beauty. Through his lens, he captures the soul-stirring moments that connect us to the earth and fill our hearts with joy and wonder. He acknowledges how every sunrise kisses the land with warmth and color, and every sunset paints the sky with dreams. In the arms of untouched landscapes, he finds peace and purpose—a feeling he strives to share with all through his photographs. The images are a reminder of the magic that surrounds us and a call to protect the precious gift that is our planet.

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sean murphy poetry december 2023

Would-be angels, rejected or returned

to earth, ever eager to share their secrets—

which, suspiciously, all sound the same—

tend to talk about that white light

we’ll all stride toward, transitioning

from here to there, the strangeness

of dead lovers and famous names

(now friends) guiding them forward,

into some impossibly bright beacon.


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), looking

like a slick car salesman saying No way

I can make a better deal on this trade-in.


Or consider the revelation of Malcolm X,

reading the dictionary from start to finish

as he bided time in the purgatory of prison,

unlearning what it takes to stay on the right

side of iron bars, figuring out as he did why

they say those who win write our history,

and why white makes right and the wrong

people get blackballed—according to a code

baked into words by the white pie in the sky:

a place where all will be revealed, baptizing

non-believers with the light of white, hot fire.


What did Albert Ayler see when he wept

into the East River, that night he disappeared

forever, having been driven more than halfway

to distraction by the voices that wouldn’t stop,

and why didn’t the Lamb of God put bread inside

his basket when he played the ecstasy of saints

marching in? Did he see a reflection—of himself

or the absent savior who died for his sins—or else

the void of all color & sound as a weary moon hid

behind the clouds, unwilling to witness one more

force majeure (holy ghosts keeping off the record)

amongst martyrs, the Devil, and the deep blue sea?


(*Avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler made albums at once decidedly—even provocatively—non-commercial, yet deeply spiritual and ecstatic, and like many other jazz musicians, despite being critically acclaimed, he ceaselessly struggled to make a living. In 1969 he wrote an open letter describing his apocalyptic visions and, after being asked why he was wearing a fur coat with his face covered in Vaseline in the summer heat, replied “Got to protect myself.” Ayler was found dead in New York City’s East River on November 25, 1970, a presumed suicide.)


Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts, and directs the Story Center at Shenandoah University. His chapbook, The Blackened Blues, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. His second collection of poems, Rhapsodies in Blue was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. His third collection, Kinds of Blue, and This Kind of Man, his first collection of short fiction, are forthcoming in 2024. He’s been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and his book Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone was winner of Memoir Magazine’s 2022 Memoir Prize. Visit seanmurphy.net

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joel savishinsky poetry december 2023

The knack of reading history lies

not in the texts, but in the tokens

people leave: the broken pots,

courses of bricks, footprints in mud,

thumbprints in clay, the body parts

in wheel-wells. We learn, very late

in the game of learning, words may

matter less than the matter the wordless

have lost or abandoned. What would

you want to ask of Vesuvian ash, of

the shadows on Asian rooftops,

the wake left by feet fleeing down tarmac,

of the bones beneath the plow?


The shards of memory that will never come

to rest in anyone’s memoir cannot be cleansed

or catalogued because they cannot be grasped

by hand or mind, not heard, imagined or imaged.

They are as pale as punctuation on rain-soaked paper,

as silent as the sailors whose mouths have closed

on a watery cry deep below the waves.


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.

Where else, who else, lives inside your body,

when every place is also someplace else?

These fates only seem mysterious, their reasons

lost in claims of complexity, in the overdetermined

testimony diluting the clues that follow the money.

You know it is foolish to watch and listen because

everything of moment happens out of sight and hearing,

yet you cannot stop yourself from believing in

the urgency of the latest news. In the end, as in

every beginning, there are always explanations from

those who know what they do not want us to know.


Joel Savishinsky is a retired anthropologist and gerontologist. His Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, won the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee, and California State Poetry Society award winner, his poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Beyond Words, Blue Collar Review, California Quarterly, The New York Times, Passager, SLANT, and Windfall. In 2023, The Poetry Box published his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. He lives in Seattle, helping to raise five grandchildren, and considers himself a recovering academic and unrepentant activist. You can find him at ithaca.edu and Poets & Writers

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alan abrams poetry december 2023

Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon,
                      that have I given unto you
                                    ~Joshua 1:3


who will sort the bodies

    from the silent rubble;

who will push the barrow,

    who will wield the shovel

to dig the graves

    in this blood soaked ground—

blood of foe mixed

    with blood of friend,

who once had lived

    in hatred bound—

someone tell me please:

    what will Gaza look like

       when the killing ends?


On Some Lines by Mahmoud Darwish

      “On the day when my

          words were stones…”

                  ~from “Psalm Three”


Why do his words catch in my throat,

as though they were spiders in my soup?

They do not crawl or build a web,

they only lie on a page, line upon line,

like layers of sediment revealed by a road cut.


They are his voice turned to stone,

coursed like those ashlar temple walls.

They pave the road the poet had traveled,

and will linger long past his departure—

each flag, another line of his poem,

written as though the very ink

was squeezed from rock.



Alan Abrams dropped out of college—one semester shy of a degree—to work in motorcycle shops and construction sites. Later in life, he owned a design-build firm that specialized in green building. Nowadays, he tinkers with his collection of road bikes, and scribbles an occasional story or poem. His writing has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His poem “Aleinu,” published by Bourgeon [now the Mid Atlantic Review] is nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize. You can find him at alanabramswriter.com

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adrian fleur flash fiction december 2023

In school we learnt History, but it was sanitised history about the British, the Dutch, the colonisers with their ships and riches, about how they came down south and did their business. And that was all it was: business, war and conquest—no mention of systemic sexual assault as a tool of war, no mention of the brutality women and children suffered at the hands of men. Even then.

In school we learnt about sex in Moral Education or Life Orientation or whatever they ended up calling that class so its name wouldn’t offend. (That’s the problem, isn’t it? How we cower at the idea of things, the mere mentioning of them.) So we learnt about penetration but not about bodily autonomy or consent, and when they showed us slides about menstruation or breasts the boys went Ewwwww! And the teachers never said Grow up! The teachers never said that one in three girls would be abused before eighteen, and one in six boys, and told us to look around the room and start counting.

In school we learnt Public Speaking, but when we should have been debating things like wind power versus solar, or legalising marijuana, we were arguing for the death penalty. We stood up in front of our peers at thirteen telling each other lies and our teachers never stopped us. We didn’t learn Philosophy, Sociology, or Statistics, we didn’t study any cases or watch any documentaries. We stood up in front of our classes playing Devil’s advocate and our teachers never told us that the Devil doesn’t need any more friends.

In school we learnt that boys could flash you, snap your bra straps or try and trip you. We learnt they could shout at you for blowjobs in front of their friends, they could corner you in empty corridors or backstage or behind the bins, they could spread explicit rumours about you, they could brand you a slut at fourteen, at twelve, at ten, they could call you misogynistic names and then years later they’d ask you out for a drink. And when you told them to go to Hell they’d be confused, because while we were learning how to defend ourselves they were learning rape culture.

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. And they watched their mothers infantilized and their fathers worked to death in the mines, and they watched the government strip them of their humanity before they were grown. And then South Africans always want to know: who are these violent monsters? These ones who follow in the footsteps of our violent forefathers, in a country built and plagued by violence, in a violent story too familiar to us all? And then the decent folk always want to say: no, we don’t know them. No, they couldn’t be our fathers or our brothers or our friends, or the boys we went to school with who were learning how to hurt us, while we were learning how to make it out of school alive. And then we want to hang them, shock them, strap them up and inject them, we call for their death in the streets while we protest the blood that every woman in our country bleeds. We want to repeat history because it’s all we ever learnt, even though it never did us any good, it never healed our wounds, it never made us safe from the violence in our streets and in our sheets and in our homes.

In school, most of all, we learnt how to be good girls. Our gogos and oumas learnt how to be good to the men who constructed Apartheid, and our mothers and aunties learnt how to be good to the men who were traumatised by it. So we fell in line, us born-free babies, us sisis and meisies, we learnt how to be good women who raise good girls to continue this cycle. We never said no, and then when we did we were ignored, and then when we began to scream we were pushed aside for the next good girl who would shoulder the burden of damaged men. We just kept teaching that tired old history: the Zulus, the Xhosas, how they lost to the guns, how the land was won. We never said how our country was stolen by greedy men, our riches were sucked dry, our futures shaped by their sins—that being a good girl won’t save you from them. We never taught our girls that bigotry is deadly. We never said, You’re going to burn. If you don’t learn the things that school never taught you.

Girl, you’re going to burn. You’re going to burn in this fire, in this Hell, in this man’s country.


Adrian Fleur is a writer from South Africa. Her novel Zithande is a work-in-progress that explores themes of grief, joy, and the resilience of women across class and racial lines. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, two young children, and chow-shepherd mix Ruby. You can find out more about her at her website www.adrianfleur.com.

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david agyei-yeboah flash fiction november 2023

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; at the lurid plumage trailing as birds flocked away. A big drum collected stray fluid from the roof. As his eyes dipped into the barrel, he closed the shutters. Chest heaving, he walked to another window and continued staring aloof into space, then closed the shutters. Jane walked up to him, curling her arms around his shoulders; her thick perfume that had teased him earlier, now strangling.

‘Today’s been absolutely the worst. Don’t know why I just can’t seem to get a job. I’m broke as hell. I’m shit. I’m –’ Mensa said.

‘Rest, Desi. Tomorrow is another day to hunt. Today, just rest in my arms.’

He loved when she called him Desi – shortform of Desire. She always said that he had wound his way into her heart, upended it, and set it on fire. Her warmth had always comforted him. But today, it felt like his inner demons quenched her fiery embrace.

‘Jane, what does that make me? A deadbeat lover, son, brother? I don’t even have enough money to cater to my needs. I’m still depending on daddy’s money and I’m 30.’

‘I know, love. It sucks. But I believe in you. Something will turn up. Something will change.’

‘Look at Amprofi. He has a penthouse. Four cars! Even Kwabena that I always taught in uni just got a job that’s paying in dollars. And Esi, my small sister oo, this small girl, just got an amazing job in Dubai. She was just sending me pictures of her new home. I – I can’t seem to understand why I’m still struggling when I’m intelligent and diligent.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘How the mighty have fallen!’

Jane squeezed him tighter in her embrace. ‘Hmm. It took me a while. But I realized that in life, it takes more than the conventional things we are fed with to succeed. Growing up, everyone says, ‘Study hard. Make good grades.’ But Desi, sadly, in this world it takes more than that to make it o. Sometimes it doesn’t even take hardwork to make it. Ghana is crappy as hell too. Our system is broken. Just makes everything worse!’

‘Hmmm. I have a tall list of applications whose responses are pending. If something good doesn’t turn up before this year ends, I’ll prolly apply for visa lottery and start life in a foreign land.’

‘And leave me fuckless and miserable?’

‘Jane, be serious.’ A laugh escaped his lips. Her embrace began to feel warm, like many nights before. ‘At least I have you. You’re like the best thing that happened to me since uni.’

‘I love to be wanted. What can I say?’

Their laughter poked through the still night. Raindrops pelted harder against the window pane. Mensa walked to his refrigerator to grab a sachet of water. “Want one?’

‘I want you.’

Mensa giggled. ‘You’re corny, huh?’

‘Desi, I really love you. I’ll never stop letting you know that. Bout the water, make that two. A bitch is thirsty from all that lovemaking. Weird how we can go from ecstasy to sadness in a heartbeat.’

‘Ghana for you. Will literally wreck your soul.’ Mensa dropped the sachets on the bed and lay his head on Jane’s lap. He twirled his fingers across her belly as he gulped. ‘How about we go another round. I need some joy seeping into my life again.’

‘Noo Desi. I’m supposed to be home right now. It’s past my curfew.’

‘Damn. Can’t believe your parents are giving you a curfew. You’re not a child, you know.’

‘But I’m still a college kid. You know how they get.’

‘If only they knew how naughty I make you. Scratch that, how naughty you are beneath that innocent face.’

‘Bro, sex is a need. It’s not a want. I honestly don’t see why people make it seem like it’s some evil thing. I need sex. I’m not ashamed to say that and seek it.’

‘Well, I ain’t complaining. It’s all joy from this side.’

‘Heey.’ Jane tickled his sides, then kissed him. ‘See me off?’

‘Of course. Let me put a hoodie on. You can order the Uber.’

‘And babe, you will beat this bad stroke of luck. Mark my words.’ Jane pursed her lips and shot her right arm in the air. ‘If I be a man of God.….’ her voice intensified.

‘Hahahahaha. I freaking love you Jane.


David Agyei–Yeboah holds an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana. He graduated with first-class honors in English and Theatre Arts for his B.A.  His writing has been published by Deep Overstock Publishing, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Quilled Ink Review, Tampered Press, Lumiere Review, Journal of the Writers Project of Ghana, and elsewhere. He was longlisted for the Totally Free Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Writing Prize in 2021. He enjoys everything art and anticipates an academic career in the future. He tweets at @david_shaddai and sings on instagram at @davidshaddai

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salimah valiani poetry november 2023

out 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 


28 years after her partner died alone of leukemia  


16 years before militant Beatriz pulled the trigger[1]


O wretched of the earth


my partner said yesterday Malawi is headed Zim-way

different similar reasons  


all fingers pointing   fast climbing Rwanda  

economychildpregnancyrape  


O beloved Africa


*


a Vietnamese sex worker and mixed race daughter

heading out


the war had been won but little remained of the country

though the hegemon had lost he could still go home


38 years later trailer parks mushrooming

shanties of US America


and shanties of South Africa

inside suburbs   not just edging townships


This I like too the cabbie driving us to Museu do Amanhã

Museum of Tomorrow   But this is not Rio de Janeiro


*


fuel gulping subsidies surpassing $1 trillion in 2022


what a person can do in earthquakes tsunamis tornados forest fires floods

life skills taught to children


BelovedPangeawretchedoftheearth differentsimilarreasons

each piece at its pace  allpiecestogether

ecocide in world time


[1] Josie Dublé, activist and partner of Frantz Fanon. Beatriz Allende, activist and daughter of Salvador Allende.


Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her poetry
collection, 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021), was the winner of the
International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry in 2022. She has
published four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR
2005), Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009) land of the sky (Inanna
2016) and Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, “Dear South Africa,”
was selected for Praxis Magazine’s 2019-2020 Online Chapbook Series.
Her audiobook (also in print), Love Pandemic, was released by Daraja
Press in late 2022. Valiani lives in many places and crosses borders regularly.
She can be found at Salimah Valiani – Poet.