The Empty People--By Ndongolera C. Mwangupili-- Malawi

The Empty People

                I
We are the empty people
we are the void people
eating our own
stuff and nonsense.
our void cries reach
deaf ears of laughing hyenas.
but a hyena is a hyena.
even if it came down from the mountains
to dwell in the reeds along the lake,
it remains a hyena.

               II
Solutions without love,
thanksgiving without gratitude;
but smiles of aversion.
and hatred forming a shapeless
hollow in us - may be – like the water
of nothingness… And we remain
the empty people,
the void people.

Ndongolera C. Mwangupili works as a Senior Inspector of Schools in Malawi. He has vast experience as a teacher of English and Bible Knowledge. Many of his short stories, poems and essays have been published in the Malawi News and Weekend Nation. His stories are anthologized in Modern Stories from Malawi and The Bachelor of Chikanda and Other Stories. His poem “The Genesis” was anthologized in The Time Traveller of Maravi: New Poetry from Malawi. His other poem “Letters to a Comrade” is published online in India on www.openroadreview.in. He believes that there is a thin line between fiction and reality. All that people write is a re-creation of what is already known to the writer and exists not only in the mind of the writer but also outside the writer, therefore, fiction is actually facts written as if they are not facts. He is married to Angella, and they have two daughters Mary Magdalena and Princess Cleopatra.