Angolan Market

Image by AP Newswire

Angolan Market

Morning opens the market like a fist releasing coins. Dust lifts first, a red curtain rising so the day can begin its loud rehearsal. Tables appear, umbrellas bloom into stubborn color, and the place assembles itself with the quiet discipline of ants building a cathedral out of crumbs.

A woman arranges tomatoes with the seriousness of a jeweler, placing each one as if the sun had briefly decided to become edible. Fish lie on ice, their silver skins flashing like loose currency. The air smells of negotiation—salt arguing with smoke, diesel elbowing garlic, mango leaning sweetly into everything.

Everyone is selling something: cassava, shoes that look as if they have already lived a life, plastic buckets bright enough to argue with the sky. Money changes hands with the careful suspicion of birds. Laughter travels faster than currency. A price is shouted sky-high; disbelief answers with a grin.

Beneath the noise, beneath the choreography of survival, something heavier waits.

It all belies our existence; we wait, and are still denied.

Yet the market breathes. Tomatoes glow. Coins ring softly. A child runs with stolen sugarcane. Life—unlicensed and stubborn—opens another stall under the Angolan sun.

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This Prosery (prose containing a line from a poem) was sold cheap to the DVerse Poets Pub.

“It all belies our existence; we wait, and are still denied.” From “Winter-Lull” by D.H. Lawrence

©2026 Christopher Reilley 

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