Teen Lit Journal

It Is Well—Arikewusola Abdul-Awal At night, when the earth dresses in the cassock of darkness// I supine on the thatched mat, spying the rain beaten rafters// I lay my head on the interlocked fingers, cerebrating on ‘what next?’  Memories of the past trickle down my veins// Dragging me to the dreary days of failures, of rejections & of mistakes// Those memories wage wars on my tender heart// Boom! My heart is bombed & I become a lethargic soul in front of fate.  I ogle the secluded angle in my room// I envisage my present; Sitting with its raised knees–arms are folded round them// Like a bony-ribbed beggar, begging for a better bundle in his bowl.  The other angle displays a blurred foreshadowing of my life’s drama. I crane// But my future is a strand of black hair in the gathering of grays// I blink, blink, blink and blink until my gravid eyes give birth to brines. My heart is an overpowered empire// Future of hopes, in fear and dangers// & I am a tethered butterfly in the

The Tale Of A Globetrotter Once upon a time, a traveller comes to our village from a black world behind the sea, wearing a wetted face  from tears of the clouds. he sang like a canary  of stories in his lonely journeys, 1, 2, 3 steps to Babylon to drink from nursing woods a milk & some gourds of wine 3, 4, 5 and 6 to Aleppo & lay his heart on the  laughing mountains, awaiting the sky's cry to pour the tears and saliva on the dancing earth, in it; is a pregnancy of Zechariah's tomb. “He once told us how an air take him away to the valley of diamonds & how a river mouth swallowed his town men”. yesterday's night i dreamed, “of our guest globetrotter, stole our lands into his pinched pocket to sell its men for slavery to the night hunting owls, while the trees cried out of war our men flies out to Cairo & leave him die slowly  of thirst on a hot desert”. Bio: Mubarak Said is a Nigerian poet,essayist and short story writer from the great city of Gombe. His works

  Art Submission by Adriana Rocha

The Mask —Oyeleye Mahmoodah Lagos is  the land of everything that breathes. There is this unsaid law here that poison and food sell alike. It is the place for  voodooist , wo rkaholics, drunkards ,  captors , robbers and every other kind of human being you can name. It’s no t a  nation, housing people of different nationalities and ethnicity.  Nor is it  Vatican  City , with traditionalists, Muslims, Christians, Buddhist, Jews, Hindus, atheist, monotheists scattered all over.  Do  not  get surprised if you see a Mongolian or Caucasian on your  street, for this is   one of what jazzes in our space. I was born and bred in Lagos, but the fact therein is that I am of mixed nationality. I  am not j ust  Dora Sean,  that six t een years old British-Nigerian girl next door. I am an elder sister to a fraternal set of twins and my school’s social prefect. I am not in the least bit brilliant, but from my nails start the advertisement of the fashion-in-vogue.  This sometimes attracts comeuppances

  Maiden Meet —Babatunde Ishola   ( written under the Influence of  Idowest's   “Who” )   I dowu   Buraimoh  knew the end would come for him.  But he never thought It’d be as   quick  as this. He  sat  in between the two  hooded   men sitting beside him in the Lexus,  palms sweaty,  his   heart skipping  beats rapidly as he remembered gory tales told about those who messed with  Alaga's ọjà .   The latest he heard was about a certain middleman who corroborated with dealers to supply fake coke to one of  Alaga's   most trusted customers, who in turn  wasted  the boy who delivered it.   Alaga’ s   favourite  delivery boy.   Alaga  sniffed  the middleman out, got hold of him, and as the story went, sprinkled  chilli  on his  eyeballs as his famous pliers crushed  the   offenders’ testicles . It was too horrific to imagine. Such was the fate that awaited him that night, too.       Idowu  was not the son of a pauper. His father, as he once heard, was the sole head of the Motorcy