Waraba has been Waraba since before Amadi was born. He claims he earned the nickname because he has the hyena’s luck in finding things. Amadi thinks it must be his laugh instead. It is loud and tense and filled with wanting. Waraba fights for attention like a hyena wrestling the marrow from a bone.
The sun is climbing from its bed. Treasure trucks lumber in from the city to dump their loads. Waraba is wetting the side of a rusted Bajaj. Little wheels point skyward, a three-legged carcass in a savannah of refuse. Waraba finishes and scans his domain. “Have you found anything good yet?”
Amadi rips open another black bag. He
Dear Jesus Christ,
I went to bed at 3:16 last night and started thinking about JohnJohn who pissed away every paycheck he ever made and only fucked virgins, John who beat up a woman's husband and spent a Christmas in jail, John who shot himself on the front porch of his mother's house. I don't think anyone shed a tear except her. I heard she shed many tears as she cleaned up the mess.
I thought about when I first met him. It was at church. He and I were both eight. He sat next to me and we stared at that stained glass image of you in your white robe with your outstretched, loving arms, and he leaned into me and asked, "Do you bel
I can always predict the weather given how my morning cigarette goes. If it tastes like cardboard or an old apple, it will rain hard in the late afternoon. If burns the back of my nose, it will be cloudy all day. If I get a toothache it means hail and anything blowing up into my eyes means hot, humid, and sunny. My great grandmother had the same talent. If her back itched it meant snow, if her neck hurt it meant midnight rains had come and gone. Some things must jump generations.
Looking at our flowerbed, you'd think it was snowing in July. The kid above me would chain smoke and scream language learning dialogues at his computer, t
"Will you run away with me?"
"Yes."
I hadn't expected him to say yes.
-
We were far from home before I had the courage to ask why.
"Why not?"
"Haven't you anything back there?"
"Yes. But I want something more."
-
We mostly lived in an old trapper's hut in the woods. I swept it every day but I could never get the floor clean. There was blood on the bedroom wall. I think the trapper killed something here. I hope it was an animal.
-
I meet an old woman among the trees one day. She is dressed in ragged brown with a brilliant gold locket around her neck. She says she can read my palm. I am skeptical. She takes it anyway.
"Your name is
Hello, my name is Anonymous
and I am a bully.
I have always been the girl who gets what she wants, especially in high school. I had them all under my finger. Students, staff and the PTA. Then this new girl came to my school, my territory. Her name was Anna.
There was this boy I liked. He was that guy, and he was the one thing I still wanted. I'd had guys but that guy was the one Then Anna came along. I knew, when I saw them together exactly what she was thinking. She liked that guy too.
She was getting in my way. Anna was sweet and charming and such a cutie, that guy was bound to fall for her. I was jealous. I decided to play a joke on he
The revolution will not be televised, it will not be sanitized, desensitized. No, this revolution will be live, living, breathing, everything worth fighting for. The revolution - will be - poeticized.
This revolution will not be caught on cameras, will not be polarized by the media. It dies standing on its bare feet before it is forced to fall on knees not willing to bend. The revolution is much more likely to be found on the run. It is subject to no one.
Our masterless words are the burning bush of this big monopoly, big money society. They are setting fire to the cities and moving the mass millions of the consumer culture.
[This revoluti
"My imaginary father beat me again." Charlie my six year old son complained as he stared up at me from the doorway into his darkened room. He stepped in and carefully closed the door without turning on the light. The evening's setting sun sifted through the closed blinds, but anything brighter than that hurt Charlie's eyes.
"Then stop imagining. I can't stand to see the bruises." I answered. "Plus they'll hurt if I hug you."
The little boy nodded and screwed his eyes tightly shut as he strained himself to un-imagine the damage. The blue-black-grey-purple paste of bruises mottling his arms and legs slowly faded. "There, daddy. All b
"well, like, i'm just saying: you can't disprove science."
several kids turned around in their desks. their bibles were pinned open, between either a palm or an elbow, the thin pages of their current verse looking up towards the ceiling.
father reinholst paused then said, "...i don't think there's any place in biology for science, jane."
every pair of eyes were boring hot little holes into jane's body. if they stared any harder she might turn into swiss cheese. "i'm not saying you're wrong, i'm just saying that maybe instead of the bible we could look at maybe...a textbook. charles darwin said-"
he held up his hand to stop her. "jane, sto