TOBI'S DESK

As the demons saw him approaching from afar, they roared in a sinister laughter. His kind is always delicious. Some of them clenched their fists in readiness for attack, their knuckles making cracking sounds. Some of them rolled their waists this way and that way. Some of them gnashed their teeth, their blood-soaked teeth, their … Continue reading On The 29th Of April → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2qixgb5

Like Halima, we are all vulnerable in a state where everyone’s dream is a frozen asset by the government. Each time I see her, a dream is lost and maybe you don’t why a brilliant girl like her lost a dream to become a mother of two at twenty It started with her at noon … Continue reading A Frozen Dream → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2pv1LHS

Recommended Reading:  Gary Krist  on the friendship-gone-wrong of  John Dos Passos  and  Ernest Hemingway . The post Ever Thus appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2qmcswo

Darkness almost swallowed an entire city but for the timely intervention of the moon. The moon aided by her eagle eye, saw from above the imminent annihilation of the city and affectionately sent her glowing hands to push away the aggressor. A half thanks to the moon; the city was partially liberated – of course, … Continue reading The Wall Clock → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2oYcPME

Chukwuma ate sand for the umpteenth time. His eyes hurt. He can barely see. Dear Lord! What have I gotten myself into? The sandstorm bites harder, feeding him gratuitous servings of fine particles. As his mouth filled up, his mind emptied – delirious from the howl of the wind and the sting of desert grains. … Continue reading From Sandstorms to Street Lights → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2pgOww6

Read up E01 here Read up E02 here The memories of last night were still hazy. Ms. Jane still couldn’t think clearly. In fragments, images of Bane ramming her flickered through her mind. For each image she saw her heart skipped a beat: the guilt of having Hugo besides her caused that. “Are you alright?” … Continue reading Spoils of War (18+) – E03 (The End) → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2qj5vfx

Arewa was lost in worry. She was already twenty minutes late for work at her workplace in Victoria Island, and the bus heading to C.M.S had just taken off from mile two. She buried her small strikingly beautiful face in her hands, sighing and sighing. “Yes? Your moni” came the ruffled hoarse voice of the … Continue reading Her Husbands (2) → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2qj3gZT

“Tea has started wars and ruined lives; we should be wary of its consolations.” On the problem with tea . The post Cuppa? appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2pgUBIA

How much do I love thee Let me count the stars How well is my love deep Let us ask my scars Embedded right in my heart torn This love, true I left has brought me scorn A blessing or a curse i cannot yet fathom Once upon a time, out of the heavens she … Continue reading Down The Road Tis Cold And Dark → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2oV691I

Tunde stood at his window that day like he did everyday and watched Shade’s window. Every morning, it was blurry because of the mosquito net, and whenever the afternoon sun decide to show off its glory, he would only see the ray bouncing off the net again and even in the evening it was always … Continue reading His Neighbour’s Window → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2oGIIgx

From You & a Bike & a Road   I’m kind of in awe of Eleanor Davis’s drawings. Her color work creates whole new worlds, but her black-and-white art is really eye-popping. In a comic last year, she made a remarkable drawing of two intertwined figures that breeds Japanese  shunga  with Aubrey Beardsley’s switchblade art nouveau. In her new book,  You & a Bike & a Road , she leaves many of the drawings uninked. The comic logs her solo trip, by bike, from Phoenix to Athens, Georgia, over the course of fifty-eight days; the bare pencils accentuate the spontaneity of her adventure and her recording of it and reveal the impressive underpinning of her art. The array of forms that are so vivid in her color work come through here as layers of patterns or as gentle, articulate outlines. Her characteristic hulking but weightless figures are drawn with a fluidity that begins to approximate Saul Steinberg’s uncannily descriptive line: the quick tiny marks indicat...

Vito Acconci, Seedbed , 1972, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, wood, ramp, and speaker, 2.5′ x 22′ x 30′. Photo: Ealan Wingate and Bernadette Mayer   The artist and poet Vito Acconci has died at seventy-seven. Acconci is best known for his performance pieces, which shocked audiences in the early seventies—especially “Seedbed,” which a  New York Times profile last summer described with admirable concision: “he constructed an angled false floor at the Sonnebend Gallery in SoHo and hid himself beneath it with a microphone, speaking luridly to the people who walked above him, masturbating as he spoke.” Before he became an artist, Acconci was a writer, and in this line, too, he excelled at provocation.  The Paris Review published a pair of eyebrow-raising poems by him in our Summer 1968 issue . At that time Acconci would’ve been fresh out of his MFA program at the University of Iowa, where, as the Times tells it, one of his short stories “provoked a minor riot.” It featur...

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Didi and Shalewa checked out the different lace fabric in the store. It was the fifth shop they had been to that day. Didi was searching for the perfect fabric to use on her traditional wedding day. They had already picked out and paid for the woodin fabric for the aso ebi. As … Continue reading B.f.f: Best Friends Forever 13 → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2oFsZyn

i was born with a graveyard. – Safia Elhillo. Departure i do know about the hate that sinks a name & turns water into homes eating boys & i cannot speak because my mouth is a grave my father’s ghost roasted a boy found in the hands of another boy & his ashes look like […] from Brittle Paper http://ift.tt/2oSOSq9

1. Your friends are suddenly too far away, your family even farther. You feel a loneliness that gnaws, a disconnection from the things you used to love terribly, hopelessly. Reading is no longer magical, and you wonder if there was ever a time when you had read everything you could find—Daniel Dafoe, John Grisham, Wole […] from Brittle Paper http://ift.tt/2oT3dm9

Granta has released its prestigious once-in-a-decade Best of Young American Novelists list and it includes Ethiopia’s Dinaw Mengestu, Nigeria’s Chinelo Okparanta, and Ghana’s Yaa Gyasi. The 21-writer list, regarded as one of the most accurate and influential predictors of literary impact, is in its third publication. First released in 1997, it was followed by another […] from Brittle Paper http://ift.tt/2oTeGSG

A sample of Basquiat’s work with Samo(c)   I’ve been thinking of getting a tattoo, but all the good ones are taken. Part of the genome sequence of a polar bear? Taken. Abraham Lincoln holding a boombox over his head like John Cusack in Say Anything ? Taken. Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes peeing on the Chevy logo? Taken. And now the poet Morgan Parker, whose work has appeared in The Paris Review , has just claimed the mother of all tats. Amanda Petrusich went with her to get it: “ Parker had saved a photo on her phone of the tattoo she wanted to get, a graffiti tag that read ‘samo.’ In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the tag was ubiquitous on the walls and in the stairwells of downtown New York City, often painted by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his collaborator, Al Diaz. The word is a phonetic shortening of the phrase ‘same ol’ shit’ and thus implies a certain kind of psychic exhaustion … It took about fifteen minutes before the tattoo artist wiped the last...

As we celebrate Charlotte Brontë’s 201st birthday this month, it’s hard not to feel awe for a woman who not only rose to literary stardom against all odds, but managed to keep her storied place in literary history for two centuries. Evidence of Brontë’s enduring popularity is everywhere, not least in the large number of adaptations and re-tellings her books have inspired. Spin-offs have produced wonderfully beloved novels in their own right, and their pace of production doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Check out these six books — wildly different in tone and style — that all share the same inspiration: Charlotte Brontë. 1. The Eyre Affair ,  by Jasper Fforde The Eyre Affair takes place in an alternative 1985, where you can, quite literally, become lost in a novel. The protagonist, Thursday Next, is a seasoned “literary detective” who faces a career-changing challenge the day that Jane Eyre is suddenly and inexplicably kidnapped from her own novel. “The barriers between real...

This is how to break a heart: You dig a hole is his heart Then with your eyes closed You walk into it with a bottle so that when you’re no longer wanted you break it there into piece; Not minding how to pick them; You leave there unapologetic Remembering those faded words he spoke … Continue reading A Broken Heart → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2qlIAiL

The lingering anxieties of growing up undocumented. Alexia Arthurs. Photo by Kaylia Duncan.   I’m trying to remember when I first knew I was undocumented. We all were—my mother, my brother and sister, too. It showed itself in our lives. In Jamaica, my siblings and I had idyllic childhoods, with backyards to run and play in, and mango trees for climbing, and there was a time, for a little while at least, when my father would take us to the beach on Sunday mornings. He was a pastor, and his job required frequent relocation; my childhood is mapped by the houses we lived in and the church congregations we visited. On Ward Avenue, in Mandeville, my sister and I watched our cat give birth in a closet, and when we lived in Clarendon, I remember how the spikes in a church-graveyard fence went through a little boy’s leg and he was taken to the hospital. One August, we moved again—my mother took us to New York, leaving behind my father, who had been abusive to her and was less than inte...

In writing her novel The Last Neanderthal , which published this week, Millions staffer Claire Cameron relied on Jane Smiley’s motto for writing historical fiction: “ you are there .” Bonus: Don’t miss our interview with Cameron, in which she describes her many “life-long obsessions.” The post You Are There appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2qjHHYa

John Singer Sargent, Studies of Clasped Hands for “Apollo and the Muses,“ 1916-21, charcoal on laid paper   My son, J., has many medical issues and severe cognitive disabilities. Yesterday, at one of the endless meetings we have about said disabilities, my husband and I were asked to describe how J. got that scar on his face. We shifted, almost in shame, as if it were someone’s fault. It wasn’t. So one of us explained how one day, J. was in so much pain from his gastroenteritis when he came home from school—this is our guess; he can’t communicate what he’s feeling, or what motivates him—and we weren’t able to get him his medical cannabis in time. He often bangs his head on things when he’s hurting. That day he happened to be standing by a window. He put his head right through it, slashing his face open on a jagged piece of glass. The developmental psychologist then asked us if J.’s ever tried to hurt us “with malice.” My spouse and I considered. We have scars from J.’s bites ...

An illustration by Gustave Doré for “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”   Ask anyone: poets are time travelers. They’ve got that thousand-yard stare; that glimmer of psychosis in the face; those penetrating, gnomic utterances. It’s because they’re literally living in the future. Literally — the future . Don’t believe me? The critic Malcolm Guite has marshaled an impressive array of evidence to claim that Samuel Coleridge wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as an “involucrum”: a howling vision of his future self in all its psychic anguish. Kelly Grovier explains: “ Guite contends that the true source for the Mariner’s arduous odyssey—from degradation to redemption after committing the cosmic crime of killing the albatross that had guided his imperiled ship through the Antarctic mist and ice—was, in fact, the physical, spiritual and psychological torments that Coleridge himself would suffer in the years and decades  after  he wrote the poem when he was just twenty-fi...

“Forgive the vanity, but few people equal my letter-writing ability!!” writes Bessie Head on March 14, 197o to her friend Randolphe Vigne. Head is not exaggerating. For the last few months, I have been reading many of her letters, and I find them to be such beautiful things. They are raw, honest, and loud, but there […] from Brittle Paper http://ift.tt/2ozBeMp