Breaking Ties with the War
By Mubarak Said
It is midnight, & you crept into my room
as if what made us love our bodies is not
here to hate us. the candle is growing mountains
out of flame, & wax out of flesh—burning
the cream beneath my skin, sputtering &
chopping the plasma of my blood. you lit
my face as the electricity sparked with friction.
the next day, we declared war against
the music in our heads. everything must
go out the way it comes. after the sandstorm,
we bundled our bodies into a silent map
and traveled a route that turned our eyes
into a flood. & when it was time for us
to depart, we took it upon ourselves to never
touch a flower, not even its petals. yet
we wish to break ties with the war in our
chests; we wish to chew the sun in our
mouths. the music still rumbles the way
the clouds do. & each rumble counts the
number of the holes it left our bodies with.
Biography
Mubarak Said, TPC XII, Sprinng & SAF Alumnus, 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 the Gimba Suleiman Hassan Esq Poetry Prize. Said is an African Literary Summit Anthology editor, a poetry reader at the White Cresset Journal, and a guest contributor at Applied Worldwide, US.
He is a member of the 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, Doublespeak Magazine, Memory House Magazine, Sink Magazine, Aural Magazine, Arting Arena, Synchronized Chaos, Susa Africa, Culture Cult Press, South Broadway Press, Lothlorien Journal, Thebezine magazine, Williwash, Hot-pot magazine, Peppercoarst Lit, Literary cocktail, Applied Worldwide, Opinion Nigeria, Today Post, Daily Trust, and elsewhere.
