Anthony Okpunor is a Nigerian poet and artist. He was a finalist for the 2020 Palette Spotlight Poetry Award, and was longlisted for Palette Poetry’s 2020 Emerging Poet Prize. He was also a finalist in the poetry category of the 2021 Chestnut Review's Stubborn Writers Contest (the only Nigerian in that list), and is a semifinalist for the 2021 Adroit Journal Contest (poetry category). His works have appeared or are forthcoming on online platforms including The McNeese Review, Rattle, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.
Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
“Don’t ask me how, but I found out this big account on queer Threads is some kind of super Watcher.” Charlii spins her laptop around so the others can see. “They call them Keepers, and they watch the people that the state’s apparatus has tagged as terrorists. Not just the ones the FBI created. The big fish. And people like us, I guess.”
Nadjea always knew her last night in the Clave would get wild: they’re the only sector of the city where drink and drug and dance are unrestricted, and since one of the main Clavist tenets is the pursuit of corporeal joy in all its forms, they’ve more or less refined partying to an art.
After a few deft movements, she tossed the cube back to James, perfectly solved. “We’re going to break into the Seattle Police Department’s database. And you’re going to help me do it.”