Elasticity
I basket the elasticity of my home, & shadow
the face of sadness. there are many paces of
growth, sadness is one. the old man counts our
childhood dialects, his fingers pointing
at all the wreckage of memories. he said:
even when the universe becomes an ocean,
life is still a telescope of reality. I set a cloud
on
fire, and it rains—folding my
despair into a hill.
the world descants my name into a poem to see
if there's happiness in the things I attached my
name with. I've carried the desire with me, and
anything is ugly except my mother's smile.
there is a promise in prayer, &I exchange
all the blessings to plead for redemption.
All Wait To Decay
I take refuge in the
bodies that turn to carcasses.
my flesh is a rotten
meal. yesterday, a wolf feasted
in our house. &today,
It comes, looking for
who is ready to die.
my fear is one:
seeing what deprived
the sweetness of the sun
from reaching my eyes.
I promise to see God—
folding the yolk of
my neck. even after battling
my fears by fanning
my ribs, I still lament taking
my first breath—a first step to being
prey.
I am a fold of flesh,
I wait to decay. &all that decay
is a feast of vanity.
from a dream, I could hear
my mother calling
my name, stressing the
middle alphabet: BA
instead of ba. I hang my grief
in the air. so, it
levitates. I burn it and sleep beside it,
&the fire does
not feel like a fire but chalk.
Transformation
I'm balancing between
myself &Heaven
so that it can't be
naked again. strange
things shuffle on
my face. &I ask myself,
how many songs can
my lip spit before
it wrestles time into
the curtain of the sky?
nobody knows that
I'm a reflection of a
mother's wrath. whenever
the sun rolled
on the floor, I drew
on its belly, all the
sins I made; heavier
than exile of grief.
before, the Holiest
is the spoilt. now, I've
not written a poem
on grief. my room is bright;
my fear is lust. this
morning, I lay on the
floor, sinking in
my beauty &collecting
memories at a mango
tree where we feed
a solid smoke; it
is still clear in my eye.
I am not sure how
it feels, but I was forced
to wear the veil of
the sun. every time, I've
thought of living
under the empty sight.
let my thoughts yield
the basket of skeletons
&let them pluck the fruits of light.
Mubarak Said, TPC XII, SprinNG & SAF Alumni, is the winner of the 2023 Bill Ward Prize For Emerging Writers (Prose) and the Threposs poetry contest. He is also the 3rd runner-up in 2022 of the Bill Ward Prize for Emerging Writers (Poetry) and longlisted in Gimba Suleiman Hassan esq poetry prize. He is an editor of the African Literary Summit Anthology, poetry reader at the White Cresset Journal and a guest contributor at Applied worldwide, US. He is a member of Jewel literary and creativity foundation and Hilltop creative arts foundation. His works are forthcoming from and published in; Brittle Paper, Kalahari review, Spillwords, Eboquills, Fevers of the mind, Ghudsavar, world voices magazine, Literary yard, Upwrite Magazine, Wellerism, Teen Literary Journal, new feathers anthology, Acedia Journal, ILA magazine, Love/heartbreak anthology, the yellow magazine, ariel chart, Afrihill, Icreative, piker press, madswirl, imspired magazine, Pine Cone Review, Double speak Magazine, Memory house Magazine, Sink Magazine, Aural magazine, Arting arena, Synchronized chaos, Susa Africa, culture cult press, south broadway press, thebezine magazine, hot-pot magazine, peppercoarst lit, Literary cocktail, Applied Worldwide, Opinion Nigeria, Today Post, Daily Trust and elsewhere.
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