Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

Easter

I arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport,

searching for the body I left behind;

I guess I packed it in one of the bags

which I gave to my family for Easter.

I spent years marooned in Germany,

trapped within the shadows of a war

fought where words grow feathers

to perch into ears addicted to old ways.

I’m willing to tear off my clothes,

spread out my wings in the thick air

and go with the cold, unrequited sacrifice

like a bird chirping in a night’s thunderstorm.

I would not be without warm clothes,

Emeka and Okoro were as tall as I was,

schooled in the recent fashion trends,

and blessed with a taste like a swan

with the grace of gliding like kings,

screaming of life and colour into a grave.

We wore one another's clothes before I left.

I’m happy things looked like summer here.

The arrival terminal was a marketplace;

I saw an elderly man bearing a placard,

Ifeanyi's Junior Uncle.

My smile hung on my lips like a lipstick

to slaughter the cold of the Harmattan.

After twenty years of tottering abroad,

I remember I did not have a junior uncle.

The man’s moustache reminded me of Emeka.

Welcome to Nigeria, Brother.

I followed him to a waiting car at the car park,

where Okafor, unchained to the teeth,

hunched over the steering with a whale face,

smiling like the sun on a resurrection day.

Please, give me your suitcase, there are thieves here.

Emeka smiled at me and made a cross sign.

I knew his parent were Catholic in the days.

You will need rest, then food, and sleep.

I wondered if growing into a manly mother

was part of a man’s masking of virility.

I will drive with tenderness, like in Obodo Oyibo.

Okafor's teeth were so white and sparkling 

that the car was in a swamp of a white halo.

I smiled until we arrived at the hotel.

Emeka held the door for me like a butler.

Brother, be careful here; give me your valuables.

He didn't wait for me to hand them over

but snatched them with my wallet and suitcase.

The reception was, as you might say, warm.

I emerged from the shower naked

and walked into an empty room.

My two bags had disappeared.

I stared around the room, and there they were,

Emeka and Okafor pointed a gun at me.

With a grin. With bolted eyes, stale crust,

like an oyster on a saucer of wriggling worms.

We have waited for this day, Brother,

but today, you must die for all of us to live.

Their laughter sliced a hole in the hotel floor.

I stared at my brother, whose beauty was so pure

that mad men suspended their ravings temporarily,

until the last glimpse of his shadow lived no more.

That’s how the kingdom suffers violence,

and the violent taketh it by force,

the Iroko tree falls and crashes another Iroko;

the rose collapses and crushes another rose,

the flower war is the clashing of beauty and grace,

against the ploughing of the spirit, the reaper,

yet the Bible is the book that matters most,

tucked under their gun-bearing armpits,

read with hands clutching knives and bullets,

in a land where great trees fall, rocks shudder,

the smallest of flowers cower in silence,

though they lie far from the maddening crowd,

where even elephants lumber and launder safety.

The black iris of my brother’s bloodshot eyes

told me there is no Jesus resurrecting in light air,

and the tombstone does not roll away in time. 

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet from the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Ariel Chart Press, Atticus Review, Zoetic Press, Unleash Lit, Down in the Dirt, and elsewhere. He won the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2022 and The Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. He won the Unleash Creatives’ Editor’s Choice Prize in Poetry in 2024 and was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize in 2024. His poetry collection, Blame the Gods, published by Kingsman Quarterly in 2023, was a finalist at the Black Diaspora Award in 2023, as well as the Grand Winner of the Wingless Dreamer Poetry Prize in 2024.