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
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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..."
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Chapter one of Ishmael Fiifi Annobil's unpublished novel, which tells the story of a Ghanaian WWII hero marked out by his unhealing war sores, and stymied by prejudice in his own city: "He has lost his very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."
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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."
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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.
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