Anyone Who Eats This Bird Dies on the 7th Day

Pot of Stories

Ishola Abdulwasiu in Iskanchi Magazine

Segun and Wale are young boys who are fatherless. They are, most of the time, left alone to do their things when their mothers aren’t around. They use catapults to hunt birds and other times lure them inside a cage, and at the end of the day, they roast the birds to eat. But one day, they eat a seven-day bird. And anyone who eats the seven days bird will die on the seventh day.

Sir, Give Me Just a Fiver ➤

Joao Melo in The Shallow Tales Review

In Luanda, this young man doesn’t know if he’s a displaced person or a refugee. He doesn’t know if he’s going to wake up tomorrow to kill again. He’s forever hungry. He lost his relatives and is begging for something to survive, to carry on.

Hotel Chatter ➤

Leila Aboulela in The Shallow Tales Review

Farah and Dahlia, two mothers who juggle motherhood and work life share their experiences as mothers with children and drift into a bit of religious discourse.

Africa to the Moon ➤

Prince Udeh in Iskanchi Magazine

In this Igbo traditional tale, a mischievous spirit charmed Akwaugo, the beautiful granddaughter of Ejelu, with an incurable curse that spikes her body.

The Beginning➤

Radha Zutshi Opubor in Omenana

In this gripping narrative of science fiction, the writer, a young Indian Nigerian, Opubor remembers her father and mother, the storms and the floods. She remembers the day she drowned.

Pot of Poetry

Two poems➤

Safia Elhillo in Frontier Poetry

not black our grandmothers insist & point

to vague & arid swathes across the map

arabia’s tribes conveniently nomadic to place

wherever blood begins to show a touch

of dark or

Bullet Points ➤

Jericho Brown in Poetry Foundation

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed

Or in the jail cell

A River of Sound ➤

Ayokunle Samuel Betiku in Rattle

The pressing frostiness of the world is felt in a clinic in Bucha,

Where a girl lies suspended between here and the hereafter

By a gunshot wound—the encroaching gloom slowly lifting

In the swaddling warmth of a lullaby

Ars Poetica with a Broken Shahada➤

Abu Bakr Sadiq in Palette Poetry

after a quiet walk through an empty neighborhood, bhabi tells me

that the bloodstains I’d seen strewn across

the pavements, came from bodies I’d shared playgrounds with.

Requiem for a Democracy ➤

Samuel Adeyemi in Palette Poetry

& is it not suicidal, to be young in this land?

Each new day is a prayer to never know the

wetness of our blood; we say, let wherever

this body touches be softer than a bullet.

Book Recommendations

HOMEGOING ➤

Yaa Gyasi (2016)

Homegoing explores the issues of African segregation in America. The author, Yaa Gyasi gives an account of the Asante wars and the issue of slavery in Ghana. The novel explores the lifestyle of Maame’s descendants as the main characters in this book.

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian American Novelist. Homegoing is her debut novel, which won her the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book. She was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.