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  Alex Smith
  Amanze Akpuda
  Amitabh Mitra
  Ando Yeva
  Andrew Martin
  Aryan Kaganof

  Ben Williams
  Bongani Madongo
  Chielozona Eze
  Chris Mann
  Chukwu Eke
  Chuma Nwokolo
  Colleen Higgs
  Colleen C. Cousins
  Don Mattera
  Elizabeth Pienaar
  Elleke Boehmer
  Emilia Ilieva
  Fred Khumalo
  Janice Golding
  Lebogang Mashile
  Manu Herbstein
  Mark Espin
  Molara Wood
  Napo Masheane
  Nduka Otiono
  Nnorom Azuonye
  Ola Awonubi
  Petina Gappah
  Sam Duerden
  Sky Omoniyi
  Toni Kan
  Uzor M. Uzoatu
  Valerie Tagwira
  Vamba Sherif
  Wumi Raji
  Zukiswa Wanner
 


Credits:
   Ntone Edjabe
   Rudolf Okonkwo
   Tolu Ogunlesi
   Yomi Ola
   Molara Wood

August Debut

Issue 2; October/November

 
Aryan Kaganof

a capitalist poem

air is free
time is free
but airtime
you have to pay for

Aryan Kaganof

     

 

Songs [for Lucky Dube]

...today the gongs of old lie silent
Silenced by an occupation force
Masked as software in hard computers
The flutes of old have ceased

Sky Omoniyi


   

Tonight I Stand with Trees

neither rage
nor fear trembles these yearning
arms astonished
in their sudden fruitless, leaflessness...

Ando Yeva


Ash to Earth

A bang
Resonates
A contrived star aglow

And souls
Designated
On flight marked goodbye.

Chukwu Eke

 

Dear Teacher and Pagan
(To Wole Soyinka)

Dear teacher and pagan,
With prim fronds
I thee wed.

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

 
        Lebogang Mashile    
ABCs

And South Africa is a fractured mirror
A paradox of schizophrenic selves
Who don’t talk to one another
Who fear each other
Who revere each other
Who loathe
And pretend
And try to blend in
With each other

And this is the time when you can become
The greatest substance of your dreams
Unless you live in a shack
And don’t speak English
And don’t know what this poem means

Lebogang Mashile

 
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A Memory of Berkeley

Still, on Berkeley’s Poetry Walk
words are the world’s emperor
and poets are her royal majesties

Nduka Otiono

Nduka Otiono      
           
   
 
 

Mandela’s Cell

I stood among a crowd
of tourists from abroad
and stared into his past:

a cage of bricks and bars
as gloomy and as cramped
as racial bias in the mind.

Chris Mann

   
   
  Postcards from London

I head butt and scream at a brick wall,
show me the life in the dream
.

Nnorom Azuonye

   
   
   
 

Jacaranda Flowers

there are jacaranda flowers ablaze
and the sidewalk mood to my home is violet again

Amitabh Mitra

Amitabh Mitra

 

On Beauty

In the fading light of the day
I see Beauty walking towards me
on her way home and swerve away
just in time to avoid the oncoming bus.

Mark Espin

       

 
 

Samburu

Tshika ngwe ya rona comes from the reeds
They have built Maluti Mountains with their hands
Beautifully, engraved their narrations on sunburnt hills
Leaving their birthmarks on olive caves

Napo Masheane

   
                 

Nostalgia

I riffled quietly through his bedside cabinet,
Lifted a hundred quid out of his wallet.

One of those things that Ordinary People do.
Don’t believe me if I say I didn’t mean to.


Paul Abbott

 
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Don Mattera/ I feel a poem


         
   
     
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