Not Forgiving Our Fathers

Once, out of nervousness, I read someone Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” on our first date. Back then Plath was familiar ground, and maybe even a sign of things to come in that short relationship—writhing. It would be scary to think that reading “Daddy” on a date was a sign that desire for the Father, though on …

Someone yelled “nigger” on the train today

The tall white canvasser collecting signatures to legalize marijuana (“so we can stop the drug war in Mexico”) lost his rap mid-sentence and yelled “nigger” not at me, not at anyone in particular—he looked no one in the eye. “Nigger” was his rhetorical answer to a question no one asked. The word hung in the …

The Man Died

—For Omosh My brother told me you went down like a baobab fallen way before its time and never got up. You used to stagger home drunk fall into that ditch by your house thin film of sweat on your brow slant of a smirk on your lips and your mother peering at you out the …

“I feel like I’m Your Puppet”

Don’t let it be loneliness that kills us. —Essex Hemphill, Heavy Corners In the morning we stood across from one another. I tried to say something original but managed nothing. I’ve never been good at goodbyes—I find them disingenuous. It is easier to leave alone and early so that by morning your absence is an …

Failure

A balmy day that began with tea, rain and felicities ended in a bare office with a plain woman saying no no no. She lowered her glasses down her nose, glared at the papers in front of her and shook her head no no no—like a child who’d discovered the power of resisting. The math …

Listen To Me

I think it must have been my last year in nursery school. The teacher told my parents I talked to myself during class lessons. Nonstop. Lips moving, no voice, moth-breath. Not even corporal punishment could stop me. My memory of this is shaky, but my parents confirm it. I have this nice “created” memory of …

The Silence Of Sound

Over the phone she said it was like those moments when you’re listening to a song and you slip into the silence in your own mind, and later you can’t really remember when you stopped listening. And even then the song is over or another one is on. “So it wasn’t me—it was you?” I …

Cat

I’m five. I wake up to dizzying, spiked breath and Baba—thin film of sweat, dilated eyes and all—bent over my bed, smiling a full gearbox of teeth. He reaches into his inner coat pocket and pulls out a white kitten that’s fast asleep, it’s belly swaying gently out, then in. The kitten’s eyelids open and …

President Moi, My Dad And I

I thought it was my old man’s birthday yesterday. I called him and he was elated to hear from me — I haven’t called in over a month — but it wasn’t his birthday. It was my mum’s. The same woman who breached spaces that women were kept out of; did things women weren’t supposed …