Growing up In Port Harcourt
was like swimming in the River Niger
without touching its water;
though my body was making sidestroke
and backstroke,
violent symptoms of living,
and occasional sliding movements,
hands flailing, legs flapping,
as though the riverbed was a stone heap,
upon which the water drips and slips out,
I could not get wet.
The wave was hot; the heat was dust,
and the air arrived with fresh fish,
like mackerel’s head on a stick,
piercing through its mouth,
delivered with a dark smile.
There was dust settling on drained eyes;
there was dust as a sniper of a storm,
a tornado, a hurricane,
running with the sausage fingers of sky bullets.
But the smile was yellow,
red and green,
a pot of cooked red beans
steaming with green and white onions.
My mother insisted that nobody trusted Port Harcourt
and she was right the day it fell
like a green apple from a flourishing tree,
crashing on the uncovered heads of playing children.
I didn't notice when the sky disappeared
and thick smoke spread like an overflowing, muddy pond
across where the clouds should be.
There was wonder in my eyes when I felt myself lifted,
feet in the air, kicking and shaking,
body lying flat on the parapet of wool,
and suspended between thoughts and fears.
When I opened my eyes, my father's loud breathing
came in spasms, like a tree climber’s sighs,
his body was pedalling the bicycle,
his back was another city within Port Harcourt
in which I saw pools of blood surging towards a river.
We arrived in our village;
I saw my mother for the first time since the escape,
her face was a black lace, spread out in the forest
to mix with the ageing sky
her vision of a red carpet in time of war;
her hair gleamed in the dark like a rattlesnake,
sneaking into the shadows of a hidden bomb.
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 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. Twitter: Johnking1502. Facebook/Instagram: Chibuikeukasoanya