{"id":494,"date":"2024-09-01T12:06:17","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T12:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akpatacww.com.ng\/?p=494"},"modified":"2024-09-01T12:06:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T12:06:17","slug":"4-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/?p=494","title":{"rendered":"Four Poems by Tomas Maldonado\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Muzungu Kwanjula\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever seen Kampala from an airplane
on a warm summer afternoon? The reddish marks\u00a0
of highways expand as far as the graves of the forgotten\u00a0
women of Juarez. Their names known only to the angels\u00a0
dancing in the greyish blue clouds.\u00a0
But sometimes we have to laugh to forget the pain or\u00a0
our tears will remind us that the only thing in the heavens is blue sky.
They say it never rains in southern California but does it ever snow in central Uganda? Why am I a muzungu in Nansana but a wetback in America? I\u2019ll never forget the first time you did okufukamira. The Prophet said if he could\u2019ve ordered any creation to bow to another, he would\u2019ve ordered a woman to bow down to her man. Such things never concerned me. I only care about enough air in my lungs to breathe out your name.\u00a0
In Luganda, olulimi is polysemous. It refers to both\u00a0\u00a0
tongue and language. The only difference is the way\u00a0
it moves around in my mouth when I ask you what\u00a0
you thought would take years to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ekirooto on Muzigo & Mbuubi Road<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

A tall man walks past you sweating. The charcoal\u00a0
bag on his back feels heavy. Bluish green made of\u00a0
thin plastic threads and itchy covering his entire body.\u00a0
You notice what\u2019s between his sandals. Ashy feet calloused\u00a0
enough to walk barefoot if it weren\u2019t for the rain gods of\u00a0
his ancestors. You see a book in his eyes telling whole chapters\u00a0
divided into sections of dreams too long for you to finish.
He knows hunger but is thankful for strong legs. He drifts\u00a0
here and there longing for another sunset to lay upon his head.\u00a0
There\u2019s a funny way the wind strokes the palm trees back and\u00a0
forth. Its breeze smells of hot cooking oil and burnt chapati. Maybe if\u00a0
his mother dies the day after tomorrow he has enough for transport to\u00a0
the funeral. They are a people in their villages but foreigners in their cities.\u00a0
A piece of charcoal falls. You want to turn back, pick it up, give it to\u00a0
him but you know if you do, he\u2019ll tell you it\u2019s not his, like most of his problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The <\/strong>Fanoos<\/em><\/strong> of Al-Azhar <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an ancient fanoos<\/em> hanging in the hallways of Jami al-Azhar.\u00a0
She shined her brightest during the days of the Mamluks: pearl\u00a0
white, held by copper wires, Ayat-ul-Kursi <\/em>circling her beautiful stomach.\u00a0
The Ottomans changed her candle every Ramadan even as the French and\u00a0
British carried on until the coup of King Farouk. She watched in sadness\u00a0
when Sadat was placed under her. His shrouded body wrapped tightly in\u00a0
chaos and hatred. And even when she was dropped and shattered by one of\u00a0
the janitors during the inauguration of Mubarak, a craftsman fixed her good\u00a0
enough that you couldn\u2019t see one crack. But now time has taken its toll.\u00a0
The glue that holds her melts with each new candle. She has fallen twice this\u00a0
year. She\u2019s stained with brown dust and fungus. I watch the janitors take
her down from the wires. I can\u2019t help but notice drops of candle wax leaking\u00a0
from her, falling, the way teardrops do when you know it\u2019s time to say goodbye.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al-Qarafah: City of the Dead<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Reddish-glows govern beige mausoleums as white sun dives into Cairo skyline\u2026I can see the stolen electrical lines feed life into cracks of forever darkness\u2026it\u2019s the stuff of Najib Mahfouz\u2019s wet dreams, a novel in the making, maybe a novella, if you run out of typing paper or wake up from your sleep. I roll the window down, rub my eyes, and look to my left. A tragedy unfolds\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pig, amongst many,\u00a0
snuffles and snorts along\u00a0
the dusty street avoiding\u00a0
the Egyptian girl swinging\u00a0
a long date palm switch across
their backsides. She yells at them
Yallah! Yallah!<\/em> her silver cross be
-jeweled with topaz swings side-to-side,\u00a0
a toddler follows behind, he needs a diaper change,\u00a0
a few feet away a family watches the news in the crypt\u00a0
of Umm Anuk. The Egyptian girl slips in a puddle, the pig laughs, the others follow. His eyes long for freedom, to believe freely, to write, to express himself, to love who ever will love him, to live. One day<\/em>, he thinks. One day<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0
Amazing what one observes from a taxicab headed to Ahmed Helmy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author’s Bio<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tomas Maldonado is a Mexican American creative nonfiction writer and poet who teaches English for Academic Purposes and English Composition at South Central College in South Central Minnesota. He uniquely blends creative writing in his TESL courses while mentoring his multilingual students as they journal their writing experiences via poetry and creative nonfiction. Tomas writes personal essays, interviews, and book reviews for Erato magazine and has had his creative nonfiction, poetry and short stories published in Chrysalis, Rio Grande Review, SEDAA, Latin@ Literatures and The Corresponder. When he\u2019s not taking long walks through Kampala, he\u2019s making snow angels in Mankato. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Muzungu Kwanjula\u00a0 Have you ever seen Kampala from an airplane on a warm summer afternoon? The reddish marks\u00a0of highways expand as far as the graves of the forgotten\u00a0 women of Juarez. Their names known only to the angels\u00a0dancing in the greyish blue clouds.\u00a0 But sometimes we have to laugh to forget the pain or\u00a0our tears […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[34,35,6,36],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-1","category-poetry","tag-nigerianlitmag","tag-nigerianpoetry","tag-poetry","tag-tomasmaldonado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}