ISSUE 10
Cover Image Design: Salam Abdulbasit Folayemi
Art
Ezeh Divine
Moyowa Lawal
Poetry
MIME
Idris Busari
TSoul
Richard Onwuasor
Fiction
Opemipo
Duncan Mwangi
IKYER, GA
Non Fiction
Uzoechina Godswill
Okoro Magdalene
Aisha Alimi
ART
“Metamorphosis”
TheVine
“MetaMorphosis Visual” Moyowa Lawal
NON FICTION
CURATORS NOTE
There’s a kind of honesty that only arrives after something breaks.
The essays and reflections in this segment carry that honesty — not loud, not desperate, but quiet, measured, and real. They come from people who have sat with themselves long enough to name what changed, how it hurt, and what it took to keep going.
Metamorphosis, here, is not always beautiful.
It’s uncomfortable. Muddled. Tender.
It’s the in-between space where nothing is quite what it was — and yet you’re still expected to show up.
To live.
To speak.
To make meaning of a shifting self.
These stories don’t promise neat resolutions. Instead, they offer insight into what it means to feel the ground shifting beneath you and still find a way to name the moment. To say: Yes, I was there. I felt that. I’m different now.
In reading them, I hope you find yourself seen — not in someone else’s outcome, but in their becoming.
Welcome to the soft, sharp truths of metamorphosis.
Let them sit with you.
— Magdalene Okoro
Curator, Non-fiction.
“The Metamorphosis of Life”
Uzoechina Godswill
“Meta Morph”
Okoro Magdalene
“The Mirror Lied, I was always becoming”
Aisha Alimi
POETRY
CURATORS NOTE
The heart of the world unfolds as a saga of transformation—Metamorphosis—both fractured and resilient, where pain becomes the vessel for growth and legacy. These eight poems, steeped in the vibrant oral tradition of Nigerian Pidgin and the enduring spirit of the African diaspora, trace a mythic journey from collective wounds to personal rebirth.
Full & Empty opens with a tribe bearing generational trauma, dancing defiantly in the darkness. Choose Ya Pain ignites the spark of agency, its Pidgin pulse urging us to embrace struggle as a sculptor’s chisel. The Nomenclature of Pain carves deeper, etching hope into scars, while Souvenirs of Grief, with its ritualistic grace, unearths butterflies from ancestral graves. The Altered Story rewrites a boy’s sorrow into triumph, and Branches to the Sky stretches roots toward boundless dreams, echoing Nigeria’s reverence for nature’s resilience. The Unveiled Self anoints our flaws as masterpieces, leading to Na Vanity’s profound truth: only what we give outlasts us.
Rooted in Yoruba wisdom and global struggles, these voices ask: What pain shapes you? What legacy will you weave? As you journey through this arc, paired with visuals of cracked earth blooming into skies, let these poems—both personal and universal—remind you that metamorphosis is the courage to shed, grow, and become.
— Aaron
Curator, Poetry
“Branches to the Sky”
Richard Onwuasor
