 | You know those strip malls that began appearing when we swan dived back into the ‘international community’ around the mid-90’s: chain outlets, nail places, shoes paralleling bigger (more branded) brands, bulk buys, generic hardware and software vendors, and a lone coffee spot nursing dreams of morphing into global ubiquity? You do. ...read more |
The Mau Mau Bejeebies
Friday, August 27th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
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Student Poor
Saturday, August 21st, 2010 by Tamlin Wightman
 | I’m poor. Relatively poor. Poor enough to have to sell treasured hardbacks – my Bukowski, my Hunter S and Heart of Darkness. Even my YDE gear had to go for money to buy milk. I considered the Mr Price stuff once. That was a low. Assistants pity me at used book stores -Folio on Claremont Main Road and The Book Shoppe in Retreat. They shake their heads. Oh God, here she is again! Tossing me a twenty for a ...read more |
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Slang Lag
Friday, August 13th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
 | Dating younger is a fetish. It tends to end badly. One of the (more minor) things sealing the impossibility of ah inter-generational romance, besides life experience, or whatever, is slang dissonance. Or slang lag. Yours is older. Theirs is kind of up to the minute. Or vice versa. Slang lag. Slang has always been a youth marker. A differentiating factor. As much as taste in music and fashion. If not more so. ...read more |
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Riding in Buses with Natives
Saturday, August 7th, 2010 by Tamlin Wightman
 | A hunched-over toothless man has polio. Or whatever makes people bend that way. He mumbles to the large lady next to him. Her curves push at the bright silk of her sari. Her ears resemble dried apricots. An orange stripe parts her hair and a red dot sits between two pencilled eyebrows. She ignores the polio mumbler until they both exit the bus in a narrow street on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. ...read more |
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Well Thumbed
Friday, July 23rd, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
 | I love second hand books. My heart leaps at a title I didn’t even know I wanted until I see it on a shelf or sandwiched in a pile of other titles. It was waiting for me. Waiting for me all along. It’s a strange dynamic, the book that finds you and accompanies you home: half surprise, half inevitability. How the falcon returns to the falconer. You feel stirred and grateful. ...read more |
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For the Birds
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds, images by Filipa Domingues
 | I was in an eatery called Birds recently. A sweet new friend took me there. I want to thank her, and trust we can still be friends. Anyway, it’s in Bree Street in Cape Town. Oh, it’s lovely. White walls, pretty black waitresses, dappled sunlight plopping in through giant bay windows. A winningly seductive patina of care and consciousness on everything. ...read more |
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Weddings
Friday, July 9th, 2010 by Dylan Muhlenberg
 | It’s the morning after the night before and Gary’s sole is lying in pieces outside on the dewy deck. It’s flanked by empty bottles of Black Label and cigarette butts – black, cracked and not dissimilar to his soul. Gary can hold his head up high though, because to destroy a pair of Italian leather shoes like this means that he must’ve danced like Michael Flatley. I can’t be certain, I wasn’t watching. ...read more |
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Last Sunday
Sunday, April 11th, 2010 by Justin Mcgee
 | Brixton, Joburg, 14h38, Last Sunday ...read more |
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Talking on The Wire
Thursday, April 8th, 2010 by Brandon Edmonds
 | You can’t really tell what sex you’re seeing. This person walks into a giant hardware emporium. They’re young looking with a tiny frame, their pants on the ground. Corn rows and a doo rag – oh, and they’re black. It’s Snoop. She’s a killer for a drug gang. ...read more |
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Last Sunday
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 by Danielle Clough
 | Laundromat on Kloof, Cape Town, Last Sunday, 21h37. ...read more |
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