Three Poems by Mubarak Said

 

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.