The neighborhood where I live has been run over by time, which forcibly refuses to pack away other destinies. It’s called “Alto”… When the rain that runs through it is cold, not in its temperatures, slippery like the breeze that blows through the happy potholes of these streets, which snake through sand instead of concrete.
It’s called “Alto”… This habitat of new “cans” brought by who knows who to this nameless urban paradise within us, we want it like this, between soul and flesh, fleeting; names are meanings that signify nothing. Besides, we don’t know how to read or write them, and even if we did, it would mean even less. Within us there is a neighborhood where we live and dwell, where we live and die every millisecond. And this is enough for us. It is enough for us.
I have a high-spirited soul that lives within me
a high-spirited soul of houses that bear witness to the silence and fury in ash
of girls wearing skirts that demarcate suspicious boundaries
with boys who, instead of trousers, wear “tchuna boys”
their underwear is more curious than the world.
There are many high-maes within me,
of the flowers that exude nocturnal voluptuousness near the skin-skinned
of the roundabouts of square gardens
of the cheerful and cleverest people of the city (high-mae doesn’t let me lie)
nor do their mosques and churches silence the voice of God here where the sun
sits
even at night
of the black black market that should be called moon instead of “star” because all the anxieties of those people embark on it,
many of them not from here,
of the Mozambique bakery that always feeds the hope of a
better bread,
of the warm noises of the rallies before the weekend
of the shoemaker who sings with his bent hammer
of someone writing a verse that perhaps changes nothing, but a
verse is a verse,
a verse is a universe
the opposite of that is not human
each one with their own high-mae.
This is mine. This is the one they gave me. This is the one I see and that always looks at me.
I don’t need another one.
From here I can feel the voice of all the people from Alto Maé
because sound doesn’t have people in its metaphysics
nor does a neighborhood exist when it doesn’t exist for its own sake
I repeat: each one with their own Alto Maé, and this one of mine is extremely high within me.
By: Hirondina Joshua
