The Burning
Poem by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
If you enjoy this feature and would like to see more, let me know with a comment, 💌 share, ♥️ like, or better yet, a 🔄 restack!
You can purchase Written Tales Magazine in print or digital, or become a paid subscriber and download your favorite editions. To view our upcoming stories & poems, please visit our publishing schedule calendar.
I smell smoke,
not the putrid stench of a bush burning;
or the crack of dry twigs in the Harmattan
which sends out splinters flying over the sky,
and brings vultures hurtling across like clouds,
seeking the scene of carnage;
not that Californian summer fire,
eating up grass and flowers,
razing skyscrapers down like angry moths.
Not the roasting of summer meat
under the oak trees, under dewy eves,
where the Magnolias stretch out their blades
to catch a wince of the weeping sun,
only to be smothered in the heat.
The smoke rises to the dry sky
to reunite with the clouds and lament
the demise of fire-stoppers.
Not the smoke from chimney fires,
a home fire, bred and trained to be gentle,
lurid, suave and cowardly,
not blazing for casualties or glory,
but a warning or a promise of sainthood,
indicating domestication.
How often hunger beats a retreat
at the distant smell of chimney smoke.
I have a lucid memory of a fire
seducing solitude to a party;
created from wood, made for a heath,
teased into form in an open oven,
dug solely for colder days and nights.
I remember our rounds of raucous laughter
when some pellets found their way
into our jackets and frozen bodies.
I smell the smoke
rising from the fires in our bodies,
having been burning since our birth;
our gradual, inevitable cremation,
death in instalments, burning our scalps,
dowsing our heads and hands,
exploring our intestines into explosions,
until our feet fall to the ashes
and we will be no more.
In every breath,
in every rushing man and woman,
I smell the mind-bugling smoke.
📢 Need book promotion? Click here to get noticed!
✍️ Looking for editing help? We’ve got you covered!
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 third Prize in the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2024 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023.