A short poem by Ishmael Fiifi Annobil poem about the feverish struggles of many modern Africans in the face the continent's toothless and uncaring leadership: " I raced yesterday into the dust storm / Like a sorcerer, armed with ploughs / And I surmised from your cackle that / Africa, too, can forsake Africans."
Poetry and Prose
Ishmael Annobil's poem addressing the bizzare cycle of African politics - the Messianic beginnings, the lose of soul once in power, tyranny, and the inevitable violent ousting: " They will be waiting like the sick of heart, / And the Rasputin in your head will / Be aroused like a bottled yellow phallus / To take their quivering hands onto your chest / And pray for rain like a monastic unicorn – / And that rain will fall in your hallowed footsteps, / By the auspices of a foreign god..."
Chapter one of Ishmael Fiifi Annobil's unpublished novel, which tells the story of a Ghanaian WWII hero marked out by his unhealing war sores, and stymied by prejudice in his own city: "He has lost his very being to such offbeat folklore – his loves, hates, habits, ambitions, and even his true identity. Most people just call him Yaro, the Hausa word for little boy."
An abridged version of Ishmael Fiifi Annobil's short story exploring the interface between the conscious and sub-conscious: "The Sunday Dedee woke up, life had taken a turn for the worse. The years had leafed through her books and left their yellow mark. Moths lay at her altar like oblations; all upturned and shocked like shame."
A recent poem by Ishmael Fiifi Annobil for his forthcoming book, Utopia of the Worms. Inspired by a ritual South African Bushman song of the same title, this poem parodies war and its mongeres; their near evangelical zeal when proposing and prosecuting war, the ultimate evidence of their nihilism.
Pages
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
