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.