My bags are packed and ready to go. It has been eight months and I still live out of my suitcase. Today would have been sixty-one days from the day I started checking off the dead days. The days I dreamt of home, of warm embraces and bright faces. I practice my reaction for when I will see you again.
STAYING SAFE AS A LOVE LANGUAGE (a poem by Emmanuel Udoma)
No one would have conceived, handshakes and hugs could be death
THE ESCAPE (a short story by Shedrack Opeyemi Akanbi)
Kunle lets the phone fall off his ear. He leaves his mother’s voice vibrating on the mattress. He goes to the fridge but he doesn’t take anything. He rests his head on it instead.
SPECIAL PROVISIONS (a play by R.C Ofodile)
Money no dey for country now. People can’t even hustle to eat. How can they make new shirts and trousers? Even the city market is closed. I never see that kind thing before.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH RASAQ MALIK GBOLAHAN
Nigerian literature is not in the state that it ought to be, given the enormous Nigerian population; we need to do more. We need to develop a conscious policy towards enhancing the results achieved by our books out there in the market across the world.
SHOOTING PLAYS (a poem by Tochukwu Precious Eze)
they say some men, hearing the shooting
had stopped, went out to play
football, and bullets scored against their bodies
ELEGY FOR A KILLER-VIRUS LOCKING THE WORLD DOWN (a poem by Emmanuel Ojeikhodion)
Somewhere around, a sneeze only wreaked out from a
man’s throat & everyone faded away like smoke.
LOCKDOWN (a poem by Taofeeqah Adigun)
Everyone thought it was the end of the world but it wasn’t,
For it came like a thief at night, taking both the holy and unholy.
CONVERSATION WITH MY GRANDMOTHER & DEATH SENTENCE (two poems by Blessing Omeiza Ojo)
We remain in our homes,
like prisoners in their cells,
because there’s no promise
of aseptic air,
no promise of safe strolls,
POETRY IN TIMES OF CORONA: THE DARKROOM (a poem by Olajuwon Joseph Olumide)
death figures drown the eyes. conjectures:
a new cold war of superpowers or theory of conspiracy?