Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back poet Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, based in the UK, with “It Should Always Be Fall in the Cemetery” and “A Mother’s Promise,” two poems about the loss of his mother. The first describes a beautiful fall twilight in the cemetery: “Now, the day is withdrawing its smiles,/ over the graves of these silent heroes;/ the sneaky snake is shedding its old, cold skin/ to put on a warmer jacket for the new year…” He imagines his mother in her grave looking up at the stars and wishes that it was always good fall weather there to honor her. “A Mother’s Promise” is a lament for his mother’s presence. She promised to haunt him, to come back in a obvious, detectable way. “It’s been over five years since the Uha tree fell,/ but the despair of your absence is like a vase of cacti;/ you have not returned to me with a body in one piece,/ but in fragments of memories stolen from the wind…” The separation of death feels so final and connections to anything beyond this reality are ambiguous, open to interpretation. The harder we look, the more elusive those connections become, and yet we have hope. Jonathan’s musical poetry sings with alliteration, sensory images and a unique resonance that combines intellect with intuition in search of synchronicity.
Read Jonathan’s poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
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 and 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.