My Mother’s Fingers
My mother died in her sleep
with her fingers unbroken.
death was not brave enough
to chop off a fragment of her nails,
and decided she should be exalted
without fingernails in the air.
Perhaps death could not see well,
and is not as persuasive as penned;
else nothing would explain how
it didn't see my mother’s crooked fingers
many years before she turned to leave,
before her laughter became a sacrifice.
My mother used her fingers to punch melons
when the sun dimmed and the moon left our house,
when evening dews erected a canopy on the trees.
She sold the melons to send us to school,
vowing that we would not stumble in the dark,
nor face the shafts of the lightning by day.
From the outbreak of war and peace,
my mother scrubbed the floor with her tears;
she swiped her forehead with the knot of her cloth,
gritted teeth, clenched jaws and sliding shoulders,
as though she carried the sky on her back
when the rain poured and days stretched.
I remember my mother’s invisible fingers
as the reason I did not see the morning dews,
and evening shades did not rob us in the cradle;
our tears did not drop from our bright, wide eyes.
I dived into the Thames and swam like the wind,
or watched daisies grow like her fingers.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Lucky Jefferson Literary Magazine, 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, the Second Poetry Prize Winner at the Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024 and the Winner of the Poet of the Month December-January 2025 at the Literary Shark Poetry Contest. His Chapbook, A is for Anfang, is forthcoming from Island of Wak Wak.
My mother died in her sleep
with her fingers unbroken.
death was not brave enough
to chop off a fragment of her nails,
and decided she should be exalted
without fingernails in the air.
Perhaps death could not see well,
and is not as persuasive as penned;
else nothing would explain how
it didn't see my mother’s crooked fingers
many years before she turned to leave,
before her laughter became a sacrifice.
My mother used her fingers to punch melons
when the sun dimmed and the moon left our house,
when evening dews erected a canopy on the trees.
She sold the melons to send us to school,
vowing that we would not stumble in the dark,
nor face the shafts of the lightning by day.
From the outbreak of war and peace,
my mother scrubbed the floor with her tears;
she swiped her forehead with the knot of her cloth,
gritted teeth, clenched jaws and sliding shoulders,
as though she carried the sky on her back
when the rain poured and days stretched.
I remember my mother’s invisible fingers
as the reason I did not see the morning dews,
and evening shades did not rob us in the cradle;
our tears did not drop from our bright, wide eyes.
I dived into the Thames and swam like the wind,
or watched daisies grow like her fingers.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Lucky Jefferson Literary Magazine, 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, the Second Poetry Prize Winner at the Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024 and the Winner of the Poet of the Month December-January 2025 at the Literary Shark Poetry Contest. His Chapbook, A is for Anfang, is forthcoming from Island of Wak Wak.
