Effigies of Gold
That mien, that zest
I know it
the candour, the plush
I know too
only a thing seem different,
the amity was no more,
buried beneath the knights gear
like spongy hairs on periwigs
pokerfaced, you ask for a name,
I tell it’s Mahlubandile,
you query an origin,
I tell it’s Mother African
you ask of a pseudonym
I tell there is none,
you mutter incoherent slurs
like a prodigal on distant lease
you evade the tongue twist,
I insist it’s Mahlubandile,
you feign unfamiliarity
though your tag say else
need I tell you, of my English beau
who calls me now, more than Baba
though she knows not, the ensigns
of the opulent Xhosa tongue
while you sit here, wishing I’d become,
the man you’d learn to un-know again,
for the name I bear, subverts the drift
of your chic tongue, purpled with flimflam.
Yugo Gabriel Egboluche is a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He lives and writes from Nigeria, where he works as a Development Practitioner with a flair for extensive writing that covers poetry, fiction, script and copy-writing. His works have been published in chapbooks and webzines including The Kalahari Review, Words, Rhyme & Rhythm, while his short stories have been published in an Experimental Writing, African Vs Latin America anthology, blogs and translated into film. He has also edited and co-authored numerous community development texts and guidebooks.
