ABUBAKAR AUWAL

Abubakar Auwal, TPC VIII, is an award winning teen author of two forthcoming Chapbooks: Portrait Of gods As Metaphors, 1st runner up Nigeria Prize for Teen Authors (Poetry, 2024) and Portrait of Broken Metaphors, winner of the Arting Arena Poetry Chapbook Contest. He was the winner of the Splendors of Dawn Poetry and Short Story Competition (February-April, 2023). Also a finalist for BPKW Poetry Contest, AIPFEST24 Poetry Slam, NYTH Poetry Contest & long-listed for Brigitte Poirson Poetry Prize, Akachi Chuku-emeka Literature Prize, Blessing Kolajo Poetry Prize and others. He's the Editor-In-Chief at New Voices Magazine, Porter at Muktar Aliyu Arts Residency, Minna & Founder/President of Nigerlites Spoken Word Artists. 

MUD-CAKED NIGHT

“a gunshot inside a dove’s nest would hardly miss,

by which I mean deplume its flight” — Jakky Bankong-obi

there's a doorway into a screeching

night; black bodies pairing the night

into a spotlight of familiar places. by

this, I mean… the night, do not happen,

the night holds a memory, I mean…

the night is a sagged lady, carrying the

debris of thumbing places on distanced

filaments of tropical nights on a boy's face.

I mean light, yeanling into the tummy of

broken hymns & breeze whizzing like a dead

melody, escaping from the ribcage of black

bunny-moon; fading to name the sky a home.

a home: housing the stars in their naked

complexity. a home: where this body carries

the burdened song of bullets. a home: where

we pretend to have panicked into

statues of ghosts: a home: where the night

holds peace, holds love, holds safety and

hypothesizes the rebirth of a mud-caked

night. each night, we danced the lyrics

of gunshots to remind ourselves, two routines

of twilight: a brother, catching the wings

of the night; a brother, reconciling with the last

breath he held to metamorphose a light-fading

body into the night or night into a nocturnal body

of black bodies.

I SWEAR, I KNOW GOD AND STILL BELIEVE IN GOD

Yesterday, mother screenshot a body on her mother's face

and there was a song playing from my chest. I did not hold

a photograph of God; I did not see the face of God

& did not steer a questioning thought on my mind

nor did I question my breath, my faith or my fate

on the palms of God to know why and how the sky

still geographs our bodies between the mistness

of death and life. I swear, I did not. I swear, I swear.

You see: my grandma has two multiple bodies, my grandma

believes in science and still believe in God and faith.

My grandma: love God. My grandma do sing God in her chest.

My grandma: is a tale, scampering on the pages of insinuating

songs that lives in multiple tongues. Sometimes, I picture

my body dancing to the rhythm of hell; I know

much of the human I've become and I am afraid every

human is a sinned template whose body bears the laughter

of death. I am afraid; my biology teacher will mold my world

into two. I am afraid the earth may not accommodate my soul.

I am afraid, I do not know if God comes from the nature or

God exists in faith. I am afraid, because each time a song plays

in my chest God comes to house my body away from the sunlight

of hell and so do physicists  gods of earth fact-check my faith

with the  science of reality and the faith my mother inherited from

her mother's tongue. I swear, I know God. I swear, I love God.

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