I Hide in The Dark

By mistake, I swallowed gmelina seeds;
my younger sister said I was a gmelina tree;
It would germinate and grow inside me
emerge through my mouth or my head;
or if it decided to come forth backwards,
its hands and leaves sprouted from my buttocks,
while its roots would shoot out of my anus.
I panicked every second of my life,
watched each change in my body
and observed how my heart broke blood.
My father said nothing would happen to me,
since I did not have manure and fertiliser,
and there was no sunshine for photosynthesis.
But I did not trust my father’s version,
who did not have enough education to convince
and did not know much about plants.
I hid in the dimly lit room of our house
where cockroaches built a long rack.
I stayed morning and evening without lights
and observed how my family came and left
without anyone noticing my disappearance.
Suddenly, an electrician came into the room
and inserted a bulb in the roof socket,
flicked a switch and ran out.
I screamed and screamed and screamed. 

Falling Down

In this photo, I was kissing the moon,
and making the stars envious;
my hands groped the concrete clouds;
I felt I was descending amid the smell of fire
like an aircraft about to crash,
into the valley of crying bones;
a volley of fire, splinters crackling.
I was fragile like a child, soft as an egg,
alone in a mosquito-infested room,
like a heap of morning mushrooms,
a galaxy of glacial mountains, a hill of ice.
Hold me, hold me tight, my love;
I don't want to fall far from you,
not after we shared a million smiles
and exchanged laughing eyelashes.
Hold me with your lips, your strongest rod
and I would stand, though bending
and I would live, though dying.

Fake Mountain

Then let me come to terms with nothing,
When destinations retreat from me
And they dissolve like fake mountains,
Hidden behind the shadows of the sun. 

I revolve in the pursuit like a pendulum,
Fear of failure searing through my veins,
The wind flogs the leaves about
And forces the birds to fly and flutter. 

I swim across the breadth of the largest ocean
And straddle breathless to the top of the mountain;
Storms rock the shores, and the ships
And I know how motion can grift the body. 

My heart shall rise from the foliage of life,
Without morphing into a century of timelessness,
Where progress is slow and action dead,
But from where I shall confront a new day.

Author’s Biography

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in, TABs The Journal of Arts and Poetics, Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. He was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024. He was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize 2024 and the Second Poetry Prize Winner of The Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024.  

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