ABUBAKAR AUWAL
- somameishengfrazie
- Jun 2
- 3 min read
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.