"When I Was Younger" by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

When I Was Younger

I swallowed a bag of pins in my mother's lap,
thinking that it was some bag of chips;
I loaded my mammoth mouth with my sister’s pills
that resembled brown bars of chocolate;
I spat chewed leaves into my father’s nostrils
that opened in the Harmattan like a flood gully;
he chased me away with three chimpanzees,
that got ditched in a valley of white bread.
My mother told me later that they were dry bones
of the one-legged, one-eyed, and one-armed soldiers
who died during the bitter cassava war,
with no one living to mourn them.
I jumped down from a gmelina tree
and fell with my stomach on a fence of hot wires;
now, I walk around with open intestines,
spilling my blood on the footpath.
I cannot hide from my crime forever,
as my blood spurs told everyone where I was.
The first time I saw my uncle's ghost in the afternoon,
I thought that he was a tree and wanted to climb it;
it was my eldest sister who kicked me away,
telling me that I should disappear
or learn to look at everyone like our dog,
splitting them into seven figures.
It's the only way to survive in a plural world.

JOnathan Chibuike Ukah

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won third prize in the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2024 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. His second collection, I Blame My Ancestors, published by Kingsman Quarterly in July 2024, was a second runner-up at the Black Diaspora Poetry Slam in 2024. 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 was the Second Poetry Prize Winner at the Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024.

Headshot: The Ukah Family

Photo Credit: Staff