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Articles by Michael Salu
What Lies Beyond the Red Earth?
By Michael Salu October 17, 2023 A few years ago, I read a lecture by Chinua Achebe given in 1975, later published as an essay entitled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” While I greatly respect Achebe’s novels, his essays have often left me wanting.
Red Earth - Berfrois
by Michael Salu The Bridge, 2020 Amor Fati, 2020 Red Earth, 2020 Colonial Enterprise, 2020 Ever in Abeokuta, 2021 Red Earth (excerpt) The Vestibule looks out with an open face, reverent towards our wondrous portion of the universe as it can be experienced through the limitations of words, voices, and in this case, my voice. So with this as the first of (we hope) many shows, permit me some oratorical indulgence.
Catapult | The New Grandma | Marina Petrova
Their new grandma died in early June, before summer turned up the heat to a toxic high. Nora found her face up in bed, on top of the blanket. Grandma was cold to the touch, her eyes were open, and her nightgown had twisted around her waist. The room was quiet, like every sound stood outside holding its breath. Nora wanted to call Mark, or better yet, wait for him to find the body. Now and then, her memory would slip and slide, and she’d forget that he had moved out six months ago.
Catapult | Catapult | The Astronomers | Adam Byko
Brian shattered into a field of light while he was supposed to be teaching Matilda how to ride her bike. The training wheels had just come off, and she was wobbling unsteadily down the alley behind our home. I could see it all clearly through the kitchen window: Brian’s good hand on the small of Matilda’s back, guiding her forward. The glow bleeding through his fingertips, then exploding out, taking his body with it. Matilda pedaled forward, oblivious.
If You’re Waiting for a Sign | Fiction by Nina Li Coomes
April says the people at church don’t talk to us because they’re motherfuckers. She says this without looking at me, her fists balled, the edge of her lip jammed between her teeth. It’s hot today, the dead center of summer when the season has lost its charm and everyone just wants to be inside by the air conditioner, but we’re outside on the porch, watching the driveway. I ask April what a motherfucker is and she won’t answer me. Lily shushes us both. We are waiting for Mrs.
Catapult | Year of the Pony | Leigh Bardugo
Megan paints faces. At kids’ parties, at street fairs, at corporate events and company picnics. She goes by the name “Mama Clown”. I meet her at her son’s fifth birthday party. Charlie has dragged me here because he went to college with Megan’s husband, Doug. Doug tends to find himself hilarious and I tend to hope he develops a tumor, so I ignore their conversation and watch Megan. She is working on a little boy clutching a handful of greasy popcorn. He wants to be a robot.
Harmless Are the Harvestmen We Don’t Let In | Scott Broker
The harvestmen arrived during the dark weather season, just days after a series of soot storms blackened our yards and windows. This was an ugly time of year—the sun bled of its coppered gold, the sky scorched like a beaker left to flame. When the harvestmen knocked, I was pressing my face deep into the couch while a harmonica buzzed through the radio. I like the way old country songs can fill a room, and how a pillow can stifle breathing without stopping it completely.
Mae and Me | Fiction by Anna Vangala Jones
When Daniel vanished, he left two women behind. Mae, our elderly landlady in 4A, and me, his wife. She’d somehow come to have an equal claim on him. We both lost him that day. He’d held Mae’s hand as often as mine, each time he led her up the creaking steps to her apartment. Only when Mae and I started to wonder, in a way that ached deep in our bones, if he’d really never return, did she finally have the elevator fixed.
The Art of the Moving Book Cover
Even amidst the wild swirl of technological developments over the last couple of decades, and despite our increasingly accelerated way of living, two mainstays from the beginning of the internet remain predominant tools in the way we communicate today.
Catapult | Museum For Women Who Did Not Appear | Fiction by Karissa Chen
These women were not forced into prostitution Nor did they go willingly to support one side in a war Nor did they stand in the spotlight and receive the applause of their audience like the entertainment troupes that raised the morale of the soldiers. They came and went silently. Sudden death in shelling was an ever-present danger on the front. No one knew them when they were alive and when they died. They did not appear in military records.
Catapult | Dear Marilyn | Michael Salu
I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. — Marilyn Monroe “S.O.U.L. is an organisational body realised to ensure an individual has the capacity for self-generated classification to safeguard the virility of future dreams.” “Draw up a short list of experiences. Order them either alphabetically or by memory chronology.
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