BY JONATHAN CHIBUIKE UKAH

Copyright is held by the author.

There’s no war worse than hunger,
and we were hungry, we, the children
of a mother loaned to work and duty,
whose life was devoted to the tablet of stone.
Our mother was pious, angelic, devout,
wrestling against the flesh and the spirit,
and a thousand times winning the battle.
She was a heroine, a warrior, a conqueror,
and was pivotal in the defeat of the Whiteman
during the Aba Women’s riot of 1929.
Our mother was the symbol of womanhood.
When there was no more war to fight,
Our mother spent her life attending to God,
attending all the services in her local church.
She was in the choir, women’s fellowship,
women’s prayer groups, intercession groups,
building committee, outreach committee,
and whatever other nameless gathering of saints.
It was a rainy day when things broke through the door,
that we returned home in the evening;
our kitchen was dismal, no smoke in the chimney,
and our house looked like a ghost town.
From a distance, the trees formed a cluster
of mourners gathered at a bereaved house,
ravaged by hunger, bitten by the snake of pain.
We saw our mother arriving from a far country.
Her face wore a glitter; her eyes were shining,
her lips were moving up and down, in meditation,
and we knew immediately that she had seen God.
Our eldest sister pointed at her with an open mouth,
see, mother’s hair! It’s dripping with oil and honey.
oil and honey! We fell upon it and began to suck it.
Our eldest sister grabbed a lump of hair in her palm;
my younger sister rushed to the back of her head,
her eyes glittering like those of the ancient mariner.
We began to eat our mother’s hair, lick the oil,
drink the honey, clapping our mouths loudly,
as though we had never eaten anything so delicious.

***

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in TABS, The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2025, and the Atlantis Poetry Prize 2026. He was also the Third Prize Winner at the Anansi Archive Poetry Prize 2025, and the Hemlock Journal Poetry Contest 2025.  His first Chapbook, A is for Anfang was released in December 2025 by the Island of Wak-Wak.