Issue 22 | June 2025

Meet the Team Credits Editorial: The Covenant of Melancholy Interview The Universality of Relations: A Conversation with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond Fiction The Hunger That Remains The Spices of…
Meet the Team
(photo credit: Pixabay) Poetry Editor Junaid Ahmed Ahangar Fiction Editor Nzube Nlebedim Art and Photography David Obi Graphics and Cover Designs The Shallow Tales Media
Credits
(Photo credit: Pixabay) Publisher Nzube Nlebedim Art and Photography David Obi Production Nzube Nlebedim Cover Poster Design The Shallow Tales Media Official Issue Cover Credit Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
The Blue Fighter | Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza
(cover photograph direction: David Obi) my father was a man constantly building fish tanks. he failed often. leaving behind wet floors and shards of glass. once, he bought a carnivorous fish…
The Spices of Stone Town | Wesley Macheso
The town welcomes you with the smell of seaweed and rotten algae. How that hits your nose depends on where you’re coming from. For her, the first question was, “which one of my ancestors…
The Covenant of Melancholy: Editorial
All I ever wanted was a world without maps writes Michael Ondaatje in his intimate meditation on the human condition. In his magnum opus, The English Patient, Ondaatje wrote in a language that…
The Hunger That Remains | Tomilola Adejumo
(cover photograph direction: David Obi) No one remembered when the pot first started cooking. It had been there before any of them were born—before the tarred roads came to Ama Oru, before the…
Three Poems | Aishat Yahkub
(cover photograph direction: David Obi) Homecoming Ọlọ́run má jé ka sí ní ilé l’ọ́jọ́ t’ébi n pa ilé – Yoruba prayer I find that the old house, once hunched over the loud road has…
Two Poems | Mohamed Mahou
(cover photograph direction: David Obi) The Black Ink I rose sluggishly one day No desire for school. On an empty stomach, I left home. My tattered bag Dangling from my back. I rushed to…
Five Weeks in Bwari | Olabimpe Adedamola
(cover photograph direction: David Obi) This place raids my mind like a fever dream. Storms whipping the buildings like the anger of God. When I smash the cricket in my…