The Triumph of Myself
Poetry by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
I have triumphed over the choking of my body,
over my flushed and angry self, my hauntings,
the way I carried myself from birth, like death,
as though I was alone in the labour room
and my mother waited in the corridor,
hoping to embrace me in one piece.
I have triumphed over my body,
that itched and snagged each time I was in a river,
and asking me to plunge into the mire,
dressed like my miracle, like my hopes,
though I have never swum before,
neither have I mastered the art of swimming.
I have triumphed over the nagging of my spirit,
that my little ordinary deeds morph into,
as one of the great things of today,
how I make the ordinary extraordinary,
and follow the trail of the eagle
without the eagle’s power of resurrection.
I have seen wars descend on peace by night,
the dead rise to attack the living.
and the frivolities of time cover myriad errors;
I have seen the wind wear gloves at night
to paint a picture of what should have been,
But I have not seen the truth decay.
I have triumphed over my sniggering self
who hunger and thirst after unrighteousness,
who have a morbid fear of the good,
for whom corruption and death were enticing,
the fogging of his mind is not a battle cry,
and night and darkness haunt me like desire.
It’s the haunting albatross that perches on my heart
as though I were the sturdy branch of a yew tree;
I was about to crumble like a dead wall
after worms and spiders had swept out my juices.
But here I stand, after triumphing over all,
after crunching the bones of what besieged me.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah’s poems have been featured in Propel Magazine, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, Atticus Review, Tab: The Magazine of Poetry and Poetics, The Silk Literary Magazine Sublimation and elsewhere. He won the Poet of the Month Award for December-January 2025 of the Literary Shark Magazine 2025, and was the third winner of the Poetry Contest of The Hemlock Magazine in 2025, the Editor’s Choice of Panoply Zine in 2024, and the Second Poetry Prize Winner of Streetlight Literary Magazine in 2024. He was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize in 2024.
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