‘Imagining the Grave of a Poor Poet Laureate’ by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah’

At the death of the poor local poet,
laurels came crashing down the aisle;
church bells chimed for an early celebration,
of a man of letters posted to Heaven
in a charity envelope;
the poet read his broken stanzas;
his clever experiment with form and language,
which wiggled on paper like a child’s writing,
or little squirrels learning to run
and limping towards a coconut tree.
But the most striking of all,
was his energy to recreate his tribe,
with sonnets and villanelles lines,
slant adjectives and horizontal metaphors
the dreadful silhouette of his ghost.

The poet is dead, but the poet lives,
reading his elegy written in his churchyard,
where tombs were salads creamed with wise words;
where lesser fishes like jubilant herrings,
dived in celebration of his departure,
where, every midnight, as the crow flies,
ghosts of his forefathers rose to sing and dance
at the pages of his compact anthologies;
little sold and royalties unpaid.
The yew trees swayed towards his tomb,
to the talented reading of his dirty dirges
and the stanzas of the oak sneak in from the woods
to snatch away a few memorable imagery
of the laureate’s best lines and favourite diction.

Now the elegant ladies of his old town,
in pink high heels and smart brown wigs,
packed his poems and dumped them in his grave,
as though they were his muse who hated his guts,
perhaps he haunts their tastes in fashion and couture.
On the blades of the daisies, the poet’s words appeared,
like the Persian hand on the wall,
his obscure limericks, long-detained rhymes,
like chained ghosts returning from exile.
They were the few things he had left that sold
beyond the date of his memorable death.
The chrysanthemum danced on his grave,
on behalf of the daisies too busy to bid farewell,
where the carnation held a requiem mass
for the poet’s starving soul to survive purgatory.

Author Bio:

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in London with his family. His poems have been featured and will soon be featured in Strange Horizons, The Fairy Tale Magazine, Atticus Review, The Pierian, Ariel Chart International Press, Boomer Literary Magazine, etc. He is a winner of the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022. His poetry collection, Blame the Gods, was a top 6 finalist at the Africa Diaspora Award of Kingsman Quarterly 2023. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2024 edition.