(Note–Today we conclude our five day look at Jonathan Chibuike Ukah. He is nothing short of brilliant, and we hope to see more. And even though our readership is small, it grows, and in it we are sure that God, or whatever such high person, must know of this fine poet, for deities remember whom they gift–LA)

Do not remind her that Heaven and Hell are real;

she will scream that she knows, she knows,

her face will become light; her eyes will twinkle;

She will raise a cry like a strangled cat, a caged bird.

How dare you tell her about salvation and redemption

when her yellow dress proclaims that Jesus is Lord,

and her handbag has a black and white poster,

shouting, Repent, for the Kingdom of God has come?

In the evening, she goes to the morning mass,

and in the morning she attends the evening service,

while her unrepentant husband and five children,

awaited her five loaves of bread and two fish,

which she promised that Jesus would bring to them

as part of the miracle He did to feed the five thousand.

Her husband rebuked her for starving her children;

but she snapped that man shall not live by bread alone,

though she stopped by Mama Ngozi’s Akara stall,

and chucked three balls of bean cakes into her rainy mouth.

The day her husband flipped out to lash out at her,

she remembered the silver rosary around her neck,

which she dangled at him, like a small golden gun,

screaming, touch me, and I will turn you into a stone.

Her daughter told her that Christ turned water to wine,

not the stone she threatened to turn their father into,

my aunt rocked like an empty drum, rolling to the floor,

My father handled you with gloved fists and smiles,

but I will give you ten thousand scorpions and vipers.

Each time, her face glowed like milk against the sky,

or an ancient wall whose brown coating peeled off,

The unmasking of a god’s charred face by a child’s hands.

At night, when she carried her husband in her holy hands,

her children ran out to the sitting room, unable to sleep,

and the only noise plundering the neighbourhood,

was their mother’s Jesus is Lord! Jesus is Lord.

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

(Image by Christopher J Ananias)