TJIZEMBUA TJIKUZU | CITY ON A MOUNTAIN, PLEASE LET ME GO

CITY ON A MOUNTAIN, PLEASE LET ME GO

The Pueblo city sits on a mountain.

The road up labors slowly along the steep sides of the mountain.

I can see the snow-crested peaks

of Sangre de Cristo from the city.

It is February; a biting wind

commands the airways.

The cold adobe church

we enter feels familiar,

like my grandfather built it.

I read the dust particles of sorrow

floating about the church

like a preacher preparing a sermon.

It is as if God is pressing hard

with his index finger

a wound I didn’t know I had.

The drowsy sun beams its fragile light

through the windows of the church.

Children come out of the adobe houses

to feast the rising sun,

as we once did

when we were children.

The children of the city have eyes

like a forgotten cup of black coffee;

history and its granular residue

brews slow and calculated

in their eyes. Death billows red

in their eyes like a regalia on fire.

Tjizembua Tjikuzu is an essayist and poet from Aminuis, Namibia. He graduated from the Rutgers-Camden M.F.A. in Creative Writing program in 2021. His poetry and essays are published or forthcoming in Doek! Literary Magazine, Obsidian Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Rigorous Magazine, Empyrean Literary Magazine, Columbia: Journal of Literature and Art, Consequence Forum, Tint Journal, The Elevation Review, Barely South Review, and Santa Fe Literary Review.