Mubarak Said is the 3rd runner-up (poetry category) of the 2022 Bill Ward Prize for Emerging Writers. His works are forthcoming and published in World Voices Magazine, Brittle Paper, Icefloe Press, and elsewhere.

Last Word About The Polls

Anything I start to love 

hates me. My vote is one of them. 

& any home that belongs to me 

disowns me. My father’s home too. 

It mocks me, I can’t read change.

Because any letter in my memory

fades— my name too. And just like that, 

it rains whenever I am queuing 

to cast another vote.

On the election day, I watched TV,

looking for the headline:

how the sun bakes brains trying to 

read change. But I saw 

a woman that gave asylum to the

national anthem, driving a crowd of voters

to the arena where the sun eats 

a fleshy face. & I slept on the bed

lamenting that my hand refused to vote.

Any time I remember my inability to 

Demonstrate my civil rights, the 

innocence leaves me. I’m a saint.

& the day I read the constitution is the day

of my death. I believe when I die,

I might be born soon.

& still, someone might tell me, 

my vote was used to mourn sanctity.

& Today, any poem I long to write

rhymes with a song written at the 

back of a shredded ballot paper.

Contributor’s Bio

Mubarak Said TPC XII is the 3rd runner-up (poetry category) of the 2022 Bill Ward Prize for Emerging Writers, the winner of the March edition of the Threposs Poetry Contest, and a guest contributor at Applied Worldwide, US. He is a member of the Jewel Literary and Creativity Foundation and Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation. His works are forthcoming and published in World Voices Magazine, Brittle Paper, Icefloe Press, Literary Yard, Beatnik Cowboy, Wellerism, Teen Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

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