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  Ovo Adagha
  K. King-Aribisala
  Talal H.An’nayer
  Chris. Anyokwu
  Zino Asalor
  Jackee B. Batanda
  M.A. Bowley
  Brian Chikwava
  M. Gomo
  Ivor W. Hartmann
  Ipelo
  Tracy Kidder
  Fungai Machirori
  J.K.S. Makokha
  Andie Miller
  Mandy Mitchell
  Dango Mkandawire
  Ngugi wa Thiong'o
  Obi Nwakanma
  Chuma Nwokolo
  Chris Okigbo
  Michael Onile-Ere
  Nii Ayikwei Parkes
  S. D. Partington
  A, Quarcoopome
  Ato Quayson
  Bryony Rheam
  Hans Schippers
  Emmanuel Sigauke
  Vamba Sherif
  Danielle T. Smith
  Peter W. Vakunta
  Victor Ehikhamenor

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PlaceNames
with Vamba Sherif

Vamba Sherif arrives home in Kolahun

I was returning home after 20 years, and the man who was driving me there turned out to be an ex-rebel. The last time I saw Kolahun, my birthplace in Liberia, was in 1990 ...

Poetry
Fiction
Cover Interview
 


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J.K.S. Makokha

 

J.K.S. Makokha is a Kenyan writer living in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Reading M.G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction (2009). He teaches courses in African and South Asian literatures at the Institut für Englische Philologie at Freie Universität Berlin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tongues of Flame


from our tongues of flame
the heat of tribal tempers
grow as from embers,
tiny sparks of orange furies.

from our tongues of flame
tempers become liquid words
words that turn gaseous later
and fuse with oxygen all around.

from our tongues of flame
this portent oxygen stirs
a red, green, white and black
explosion of furious nations

that diffuses swiftly like toxic
gaseous lava from the holy Mt. Lengai,
whose easterly land poisoned by tribalism
eats its own down tongues full of blame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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