by Esihle Lupindo PROLOGUE Sex is a vast language in which we’re all fluent across continents, dialects, cultures, borders, time, and sexualities. A universal language requiring neither translation nor translator. Sex is full of contradictions: so ubiquitous yet so private, almost as if it doesn’t exist. Despite any amount of danger or restrictive policing, it can…
Tag: Fiction
An Echo of Voices
by Anathi Jongilanga Vumani comes to her often these days. His siblings are away: one is married, somewhere in eNgcobo, and three are at work in Kimberley, Cape Town, Jo’burg, and the money they send home hardly covers a month’s groceries anymore. Somewhere along the way, he loses his cell phone, therefore the direct line…
Dear Father
by TJ Benson I have been reading the Bible again, from the New Testament, to know how it feels now that I have abandoned the church. I read about the birth of Jesus and wondered about the shooting star that led the Magi to the town of his birth. As a child, I used to think…
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple
Open the Window, Let in the Cool Air The aging chorus girl is supposed to take dance lessons, but instead she takes a lover. The aging chorus girl is supposed to move left-right-left, but instead she shimmies up to a fellow resident to make her intentions known. It’s Cha-Cha Night in the common room, and…
Luke Sutherland
My Octopus Wife My wife and I liked to play a game. I called it the Big Squeeze, but I don’t know what she called it. Perhaps nothing. I would bring a container to her den, and she would contort herself into its shape. On stormy days when the sea wasn’t safe for me, I…
Nadia Born
Inkling All the rage: doodling on each other’s skin. Girls begin to wear Bics as accessories—stuck in buns, behind ears, on belt loops, over bra straps. Sometimes they dare to draw phallic symbols or crushes’ names that only wane when nail-scrubbed under scalding water. Mostly it’s just nonsense—hearts and stick figures and such. There’s so…