The Valley of the Living
by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Like a man tethered to the edge of a cliff,
I stumbled into the ragged end of a mountain,
where there were no roses and no daisies;
the wind was whipping at my back,
the damp was groaning under my feet
and before me was the deep valley
into which I was about to fall.
Down the valley, there were bones
cracked, broken like pieces of stained glass
rankling and knocking against one another,
dry and black like my mother’s fish basket
hanging over our kitchen fireplace.
I heard them groan; I heard them scream,
I imagined their dreams scrambling at the gate.
How I wished to jump into the mire
where the bones seemed like slain foxgloves,
or throw down a ladder for them to climb
and heave themselves over the ground,
where there was water, food and air
or where perhaps their freedom would collide
against the heavy boots swaying on the surface.
How helpless I felt watching them fight
or groan in agony of their long bondage,
when I heard a loud murmuring in their midst,
like the clang of wheels or the jangling of rocks,
and I was keen to know what promise emerged,
when a band of seagulls flew over the valley.
They watched the dry bones gagging and mugging.
And they urinated in the muddled pit.
Such a spectacle I had never seen before,
that the bones knocked against one another,
and soon were padded with flesh and blood,
muscles erupted from their dead limbs
and heads, hands and feet formed in a haste.
One by one, the dead wore life-like fresh flowers
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics, 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.
