« Elle est morte. » Je ferme les yeux un instant. Inspiration, expiration. Je reprends mon souffle. La voix de ma sœur au téléphone me semble si… irréelle. Si lointaine, d’autant plus qu’avant cet appel, ça faisait bien cinq ans que je…
Some Things Are Most Beautiful in the Dark
Image Credit: AtlasbyAtlas Studio, Shutterstock.com 1. Mother pressed the sweltering blade deeper into my left thigh, ignoring my scream this time. The blood was a thin streak of bluish-red. She sighed and wiped it off my thigh with…
Taxi Drivers Who Drive Us Nowhere
Lagos, my friend says, is sick in both senses of the word; a city dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder, with an emphasis on Dissociative…
Atelier Bakwa pour jeunes écrivain•e•s
Date limite d’envoi des candidatures : 8 mai 2019 Click here to read the English version Vous vivez au Cameroun ? Vous avez entre 18 et 30* ans ? Vous êtes écrivain·e émergent·e ou souhaitez le devenir ? Bakwa Magazine,…
The Bird that Fluttered Free
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu Perhaps a good place to start would be the day he first kissed you in his lodge, shielded by locked doors and drapes so heavy you imagined they would only submit to a dry cleaner who knew…
How to Learn a Language
Isabella Morris “How to learn a Language” is the second and final story of a two-part prelude to Bakwa 08, the “Pain issue”. The first was Sturdy Man with Shaggy Beard by Ucheoma Onwutuebe. The first thing the teacher writes on…
Sturdy Man with Shaggy Beard
I carry his memory around me…. I bear him in my pouch like a kangaroo carries her young…. I do not remember clearly anyone before him. Do they even exist? Every love I’ve had before now has become hazy, chaff…
A Reversal by Imbolo Mbue
A short piece on the theme of Belonging, read by the author at the 29th Annual PEN Faulkner Celebration in Washington, D.C., on October 16, 2017.
A Certain Kind of Longing
In his first short story to be published, Roy weaves the intricacies of relationship issues, as experienced by the narrator, and by the latter’s aunt, into a beautiful juxtaposition that portrays two people’s differing approaches to love.
1985
TJ Benson explores mental illness in a haunting and beautiful story which explores the relationship between a man and his wife and how they both navigate through it. Morning When he opens his eyes it is 1985, the room…