Grey's Book Club

I pulled her closer to my beating heart. Thump thump, there goes my racing heart. Placing my mouth on her full, soft lip. I trailed my hand down her curved shaped hip. From her lips escaped a gasp. For I was fast like an Egypt asp. Her eyes wide, she fell to the ground. Shaking and writhing like she was tied and bound. Poor child, she was just fifteen. But it had to be done, she was number seventeen. For a souvenir, I cut a piece of hair. Then I was gone like a wisp of air. I am K.O.L. The dark killer from Lorhage. © imagine white

. Stolen in the night. With little or no light. I was sold into slavery. With a little girl named Avery. Travelling by sea to a faraway land. All water and waves with no sand. I remember feeling cold, Holding close the eight year old. Scared I will die. Without saying good bye. Closing my eyes, I fell asleep. Falling in deep, deep, deep. It was a nightmare. © imagine white.

The 15-inch black box fitted above the wooden frame made us Alice Nkechi in Yonderland. We had wild fantasies and beautifully conjured wide fallacies deeper than life. Sometimes, we wished Father could get dirty enough to call the labourers to dig him a pool. Till this day, Father is next to God with his purity. What the black box taught us was that a house without a pool is not worth living in. It is like a roughly prepared lie; not worth believing. We prayed and fasted. We sanctioned water from our lips, just to pay homage to God. And God answered our prayers. The rains came and the floods raged. We had our pool. But what is a pool without a house? — Cranium X.

I am very good at falling. Very very good at getting hurt Better at crashing. Very very better at holding on. But what I am best at is recovering; I recover quickly with brutal scars. You know what I am perfect at? I am perfect at moving on. -GreyMars My pride is like a mountain, a very high tower. It shoots upward like a fountain, blooming like a wild flower. I deserve better. I am meant for greater. Then nature happens, It crashes down like an avalanche. Solemn whispers of pity. Self loathing pities But then again, my pride is like a never bending fire. It burns wildly again, even after it dies. -GreyMars Picture source: anonymous

By Martín Espada   —Barrio René Cisneros Managua, Nicaragua, June-July 1982 This was the dictator’s land before the revolution. Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis, his army brooding in camps on the border, and the congregation of the landless stipples the earth with a thousand shacks, every weatherbeaten carpenter planting a fistful of nails.

By Mark Strand   Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

BY OKUNOLA O. ZAINAB RORY He wasn’t a drinker but that night, his friends had forced him to the pub and had made him down a lot of booze. Now, he was regretting it. He had thrown up many times and was now feeling woozy and exhausted and to top it all, he had a splitting headache. He got home about half past eleven and went straight to bed but couldn’t sleep. He dunked his head under the pillow to keep the buzzing sounds in it out but they wouldn’t stop; It just kept buzzing like a stray bee had entered his ears up into his brain and had created a colony there. He went to the bathroom, washed his head, his face but it wouldn’t stop. Once he raised his head to look into the mirror, he saw what a mess of a man he had become. “ people like me” he scoffed and burst into a hearty laughter that drained away very quickly. He reached for the cabinet above the sink on the wall to reach for his pills; the ones that made him sleep or manage to keep the buzzing out of his head. He swall...