The downtrodden brooks roared like seven thunders
The numerical murmur of the galloping snowy waterfalls
Enriched the harmonious heartbeat of the kettle drum
The wailing waves were tired troops of travailing timbers
Herded hysterically towards the monolingual sawmill...

The query of who’s mating dance I wish to attract
makes the peace of drabness comforting.
I am a bird of paradise made for one
garden, the flaming swords are for my protection.
Does it matter that my feathers droop and fall?

Water is a blessing to this baked earth
Insatiable from birth…
Armed for the feast of the Tabasky
Mark how even the Joshua tree observes
This double-bent figure...

I watched his wife as she followed behind, confused, her hands on her head.  Half running, she cried and begged the villagers to let him go.  She tripped on her loose khanga, then got up and followed the crowd, parting the throng with her hands, trying to reach her husband who was being shoved and pushed angrily...

Every Friday, when the sun folded the shadows directly beneath objects under its scotching brilliance, the adults in Zaria would have their hearts in their mouths until sundown. Activities of the spirits that often spilled into the real world characterised that period. Azumi became victim one Friday. She kept four goblins and sacrificed the blood of two-legged creatures to them. The blood of birds was the usual. On that Friday in the evening, however, the goblins demanded for human blood...

I raise my hand against the storm
Thundering out your name
Wherever it is you have gone
Time is nothing but pelts of rain
On the umbrella of our camaraderie...

In this sweltering, settled country
of self-awareness and neuroses
of unsettling homesickness
as if stitched under the water
of a river, ocean and the sea
we shrink back from the mouths of fire starters...

A little boy came to me and said; “I want to go someplace I can study and be a great man.” I looked at him. The flame of ambition beamed in his eyes. He smiled at me – that sort of smile that reached the ears without showing the teeth...

Xiexie’s first acquaintance on entering the woman’s house was with the smell, which ought to be written with a capital S. It could not be helped. It was not an unpleasant smell but it was strong and not exactly pleasing. Like a ferment of beans left to slowly rot in a kind of manufacturing process set off with sprinkles of sulphuric spices...