Miracle
TRANSITION MAGAZINE
Our heads move simultaneously, and we smile at the tall, svelte man who strides purposefully down the aisle to the pulpit. Once there, he raises both of his hands then lowers them slightly. He raises his chin and says let us pray.
The Summer of Ice Cream
virginia quarterly review
About a year before the summer of ice cream began, my father called Tayo and me into the living room and told us that he would be leaving his job at the Kodak plant in Salt Lake City. He asked us to sit on the couch and he sat down next to us, and then he stood up and sat down again.
Genesis
CALLALOO
She told me I could serve her in heaven. She accompanied me to school each day. School was about a mile away, and a few hundred feet into my trek, just as my family’s apartment building drifted out of view behind me, she would appear at my side.
New Mom
AFRICA 39
The most confusing period of my childhood began when my schizophrenic mother left us and returned to Nigeria. Her sickness had come on so quickly—had wreaked so much havoc in our lives—that my brother and I weren’t really traumatized by her departure; when she left, we simply felt wounded and relieved.
The Goat
kgb bar lit
Our father lifts his axe into the the air and brings it down heavily on the goat’s neck. A lush curtain of blood gushes down from the wound, muscles and tendons peeking out before tumbling into the grass. As the blood rushes out, our father snaps one of its legs. And then the other.