Die Bärliner invites you to revisit a flash fiction piece by BCB graduate Océanne Fry (HAST’ 21), originally published during our Poetry Month in April. Océanne worked on this project last Spring semester as part of the “LT 167 Writing African Futures” course taught by Prof. Dr. Kerry Bystrom at BCB, in association with the
CategoryFiction
Open your eyes
A slow movement of the eyes before the dizziness of the day is taking over. The clumsy beams of the Sun are rushing into the mirror on the wall and then bouncing back, leaving behind no more than a puddle of light. The birds are finding their melodies they lost during the night, starting the
Her Hardest Hue to Hold
We decided it was the best place to study flamingos, but camping was Samson’s idea. He inherited a wrangler jeep from some sort of uncle up north. I was at the lake lodge where we did most of our research when he dreamt up the idea. Sitting on the lawn by the lake, everyone heard
I Checked and It Was Still There
“But as they burned, disappearing irrevocably one after the other, you stopped believing that there was any purpose in a book’s existence. Or perhaps the only one to have worked out their purpose was the Sarajevan author and bibliophile who, instead of using expensive firewood, warmed his fingers last winter on the flames of Dostoevsky,
Choice Words
We are at Boots, Etc., exit 149 when driving South in Georgia towards New Orleans. We watch as a man hammers hand-wrought silver tips onto Henry’s new red leather boots. The man uses shining little nails, he squints, he moves his hands as delicately as a pianist, as a mother braiding hair. As he works behind
The Fire That Never Went Out
She sits by the smouldering tarp, kicking a rock with her dusty boot. Cinder and coals smolder perpetually. The sun is stingingly bright. You can taste the heat. She used to go down to the sea, to cool off, to bathe, to feel weightless. She’d go at night with her cousin, Zadi. When the sea
Metal Birds
Far behind the house’s rear, among moss and dead leaves was a spring. Connected to the spring by a small staircase of large rocks lie a stream that flowed as a river when it rained and ran dry through summer and winter. Insects–gnats, mosquitos, flies–danced above puddled water in the day, the light giving shape