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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803288577 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNP - Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2016 |
| Series: | African Poetry Book |
| Pages: | 126 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Pennsylvania State University–Altoona. She has four other books of poetry, including Where the Road Turns and Becoming Ebony, part of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry.
Read an Excerpt
When the Wanderers Come Home
By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-9501-8
CHAPTER 1
Book I
Coming Home
So I Stand Here
They say thresholds are meant to keep
the outsider out, the insider, in. Crickets
forever creeping along walls, along the edges
of things. You must first lift your right foot,
and then the left, and then enter the hut
before the kola nut is served, before
the spiced pepper is offered, and the water
from the stream, handed to you. This is
the way of things, the way of life, clay to clay,
your hand holds not just a cup of water,
but the source of life. Tradition. After that,
the outsider is now an insider, but everywhere
I go, my country people have become
a different people. So, I stand here,
an outsider, at the doorpost. Do not tell me
that these corrugated old dusty roads
have emerged of themselves out of the war.
Or that the new songs these strangers sing
in this now strange country of ours are
from the time before the bullets. Do not tell
me that the kola nut you served me
will answer all of the questions that linger
in my soul. Do not tell me that I belong
to this new people. I have wandered away
too long, my kinsmen. I have wandered so far,
my feet no longer know how to walk the old
paths we used to walk. I do not know these
people, birthed from the night's passing
of lost ghosts. I do not know these people
who have so sadly emerged out of the womb
of war after the termite's feasting.
My kola nut has lost its taste, and the spiced
pepper, now, with a new spice. I am too
impure to meet my ancestors, and the gourd
of water I have just fetched from Ngalun
weighs heavily upon my head. I stand
at the threshold, my kinsmen, come and help
me over the doorpost that the termites
have eaten. I do not have the hands to greet
my ancestors. I do not have the hands
to greet my kinswomen, and the hand with
which I take hold of the kola nut is shriveled
by travel. The kola nut you served me
is no longer bitter, oh come, my kinswomen,
the horn blower has lost his voice. But they
tell me that the horn blower does not need
his voice to blow the horn to let me in.
What Took Us to War
Every so often, you find
a piece of furniture, an old head wrap
or something like a skirt
held together by a rusty pin.
Our years, spilled all over the ruggedness
of this war-torn place,
our years, wasted like grains of rice.
Relics of your past, left for you,
in case you returned accidentally
or intentionally, in case you did not
perish with everyone else.
Something hanging onto thread,
holding onto the years
to be picked up, after locusts
and termites have had their say,
the graciousness of looters,
the graciousness of termites
and temporary owners of a home
you built during your youth,
during the Samuel Doe years
when finding food was your life goal.
How gracious, the war years,
how gracious, the warlords,
their fiery tongues and missiles.
All the massacres we denied,
and here we are today, coming upon
a woodwork of pieces of decayed
people that are not really pieces
of woodwork at all.
This should be an antique, a piece
of the past that refused to die.
Wood does not easily rot, but here,
termites have taken over Congo Town
the way Charles Taylor claimed the place,
the way Charles Taylor claimed
our land and the hearts of hurting people,
the way the Atlantic in its wild roaming
has eaten its way into town
even as we roamed, in search of refuge,
the way whole buildings have crumbled
into the sea, the way the years
have collapsed upon years.
What took us to war has again begun,
and what took us to war
has opened its wide mouth
again to confuse us.
What took us to war, oh, my people!
Erecting Stones
January 2013
Here, in Congo Town, I'm picking up debris
from twenty years ago. Some remnants of bombs
and missile splinters, old pieces of shells from
the unknown past. A man strays into my yard,
wanting my old range and a fridge some wartime
squatters, passing through my home, did not take
away these twenty-two years, while my home floated
like a leaf, through the hands of mere strangers.
He will build coal grills for sale, but it is in the trash
that I'm searching for the past, searching for myself
in the debris of years past, and here, the upper
part of a cotton skirt suit, checkerboard fabric, black
and beige, size six, yes, that's me, those many years
ago, size six, high cheekbones, slender, sharp,
the losses we must gather from only memory.
But we're among the lucky, I tell myself as a former
neighbor stares at me, the new neighborhood
children, hollering around us. "I hear you're back,"
my once lost neighbor says, staring in awe that after
so long, we're still alive. "No, we're not," I say.
"We're only picking up the broken pieces of the years,
erecting stones, so the future can live where we did not."
"Thank you, Mrs. Wesley, for coming back to us,"
he says. "We just buried Zayzay yesterday."
"You're still burying the dead, over twenty years, still
digging and shoveling, to bury the young and early dead.
This is a country of ghosts," I say, "a county of ghosts."
Looters of War
Monrovia 2011
The still ruined places of the past
of bullet walls and buildings, despite
the desperation
to put the past away.
If only we could put ourselves in boxes.
If only we could put away the deep scarred
places, where sores are so deep
they cling like something too malignant
for words. When my children come home,
I should walk them through
this place of now eroded landscapes, once
owned by dead people.
The rain splashes away muddy puddles
and out in the swamps, even the frogs
wail like old village women in mourning.
The stay-at-home have gathered overnight
to steal our land. The old rocky hillsides,
the sloping fields and endless
beaches, all, taken by looters.
Coming Home
A Poem for MT
When MT calls me at dawn,
I think it's about Mother's Day.
But this is not about Mother's Day,
I see. Instead, it is his car,
broken into by thieves for old screws,
a toolbox full of the tools
he needs to unscrew his own Africa,
an air filter, to filter the years of dust
and mite bites, to filter the dust
from termites, eating into
the wood of things after the war.
This boy was supposed to be African.
The fetus, I cuddled like precious
diamonds in my body after grad school,
my small body, holding on to hope
that my son would be his own Africa someday.
This child I carried home in my young
womb so he would not wander far
has returned to a place
we used to call home.
But war is not a friend of the living.
War is not your neighbor, coming
with a basket of cookies in welcome.
War is an alien monster,
and so we packed up house and fled
years ago from this place.
And now, this same child, welcoming
home the mother, who has become
the wanderer. This same child, pulling
boxes and springs, tools and shovels,
felling old, unnecessary trees,
pulling rocks so stones, fallen
two decades ago, can stand again.
It is my son, scrubbing and mending,
trying to undo the war we started,
the foreigner, returning to his lost
country, overrun by battle.
There is a pile of dust,
concrete as rust, concrete as dust
cannot know concrete.
There is the dust from the past,
eating away the present.
Our people say, God gave us sons
to hold the wood, burning, above our roofs,
to hold the town on its screws.
But we are but wanderers, I tell my son,
the land we owned will no longer own us.
The land we teamed
has become unleashed with scorpions
and termites, so here you are, my son,
meeting the termite,
the eater of all life.
So, here you are, my son,
fighting a new war,
digging up old termite hills.
Send Me Some Black Clothes
Elegy for my homecoming
Sweet sorrow of family reunions around
the dead; so I get dressed for another funeral.
But I'm almost ashamed to burden my friends
with news of another dead relative, as if I were
some storehouse of dead people, as if I could
earn a living, announcing news of my dead
or dying brothers and sisters. I returned home,
walking into a place of dead bodies here,
in Monrovia, only corpses, the same manner
in which I left decades ago, walking through
dead bodies of my people during the war.
Someone, please send me some black clothes.
Liberians are dying like earthworms after
a long rainy night, dying, the way centipedes
crawl out of a burning shed to die quietly.
They say, life has many zigzags, many humps.
They say, if you live long, you will see something.
Sehseh Juway, the woman, named after my Iyeeh,
of whom I sing in my poems, of whom I've
strung this Grebo word around verses, Iyeeh's
namesake has died, so Uncle Robert travels
five hundred miles of rugged terrain by road
and dust because, there's no room to make
excuses not to bury your sister. So, here I am,
lost daughter, come home for something else,
and I find myself standing among caskets.
Life has rotted away, the remains of lack, when
a country decides to rise up, not from the ankles,
but from the head as those at the ankles die
of lack, as if living in lack were a curse, I say,
send me Second-Mourning clothes to spread
along the footpaths so millipedes can crawl.
Send me some Second-Mourning clothes, my
people, please, Liberia smells again of corpses.
The poor are burying their dead, so let the rivers
swell in rage. Let drums cry dirges against
the wind. Let mutiny break out upon the town.
There is too much death in town, so, I ask for
the town crier, he, too is dead. Ask for the horn
blower, he, too is dead. Ask for the Bodior,
the Bodior, too, is dead. Ask for the young virgins
and their suitors that used to line the roads,
they are all dead. Someone, please holler for me.
Someone, please send me some black lappas
to cover the ground in the Harmattan dew.
I Need Two Bodies
One, to sleep and the other,
to shuffle, push, and grind up the day.
One, to bend a rod,
and set the world upright,
the other, to cuddle the earth
so it holds on to its hold.
One, to inhale, and the other, to exhale.
One, to lie down upon freshly dewed grass,
the orange-red sun, dying down slowly
in my other body's eye.
I want my other body to drive like
a stubborn engine as stubborn
as a woman, after middle age,
my other body, standing on metal legs,
ready to grind
a large day downhill.
To empty these muscles of aching
pains down some drain.
I want my working body to sigh
and stand firm to all the battles
a woman must wage
against the grind of unsuspecting
roadblocks. One body, to be
the everlasting pull against push,
my one body, unbridled; legs,
as concrete as the Statue of Liberty
on a cloudy morning,
her gazing eyes upon
my old tired face as I sit
on a far ferry into the city
quiet, as sleep.
Then, my sleeping, eating,
resting body, rising out of unnecessary
things, tells this old one, "Be still,
be still and know that I am you.
Be still, and know
that I am Woman."
The Creation
Woman was made so clothes would have something
to wear. So shoes would find company, hair,
finely braided, hanging down the shoulders of an
unloose woman. A tightly fitted skirt, finding knees.
Some lappa suit, carved out of unyielding things.
Stiff fingers, sewing and sewing, until fabric
attaches itself to permanent skin. All the lost hours
and lost sleep, just so fabric can find sliding ground
on the back of a woman, feeding herself on scraps
of unwanted love in a city, long lost to map builders.
Woman was made so pavement would have feet
to carry. Loads of sharp heels, bare, only to shoes.
So feet would know the forgetfulness that comes
with stepping, the forgetfulness of twisting not just
to the rhythm of new love. Woman was made
so men would have trouble to fall into. Like a ditch,
dug so deep, falling into it only creates deep scars
in an already scarred heart. Woman was made
so worry would have a place to lease, so the sun
would find moon, so moon would have daylight
to blame for its own disappearance, so worry
would burn down the throat of some lonely man.
Woman was made to put the world in places where
place cannot hold earth. Woman, carved crudely
out of the beauty of ugliness, out of scarred pieces
of pain. Beauty, out of all the broken parts of a broken
city, where the heart has forgotten how to mend.
Woman was built out of corrugated pieces of zinc,
just so the earth would rebuild, so pain would forget
how to be. Earth, finding erectness in the small,
bent, carved places, where the world has been so
long broken, there is no longer any unmaking.
Woman was made to remake other women into
other hard pieces of burnt clay. So the clothing
we wear could talk to other clothing we can't wear.
Woman was made from scarred tissues of metal,
from the firmness of a brick wall, iron pieces
standing up at last for something. So tears
would have a face to wear, so pain would have
something to carry around, so the earth would
find the heart to heal all the brokenness of ruin.
Woman was made to unmake a man the way
you unmake a face the way you undo, to rewind
the corrugated heart of a world, too long broken.
And You Tell Me This Is a Funeral?
Theater. The news comes in,
and from every town and village,
like chickens that have heard
of scraps in town, women and men pour
in upon the Death house.
Po-po wlee-oh, po-po-wlee-oh,
Theater. Women, their hair loose, they
come, shouting, screaming, wailing,
and from out of the wood of things,
dirges burst out upon the mourners, because,
somehow, the dirge-singing girls
have come out of their silence
where for years, they learned how to wail
for the passing of the renowned king,
for the passing of the father-in-law,
for the passing of the husband,
for the passing of the townswoman, the
mother of children, the mother of mothers,
who is now dead, Iyeeh Kpala.
The women are seated out in a huge row
on The Mat, feet, stretched out
as if they will be here on this Mat
for years. They wail, as if taking turns;
they wail, when another woman arrives
from far away, her dusty feet and her
hair, unkempt, just for this moment.
She throws off her luggage from
the heat of her head and falls flat
on The Mat, rolling, screaming,
wailing, her own dirge, like a folk song.
Now she's wailing about the heroic deeds
of the town, of the townsmen before us,
of the townsmen of the Clan,
the ones that gave birth to the now dead
king or man or husband.
She wails, as if this man were
the last man left on the earth.
The chorus of women are now all
singing dirges, all of them, like a choir
for the dead, their musical rhythm
and lyrics will bring tears to the eyes
of the coldest man in the world.
And now, the history of the town
is being told on the tiny string
of a Grebo dirge, an intricate
of dirges, telling of the wars they've
fought, the heroes, lost, the children
that did not come out of birth
chambers because of those wars,
and this hero, now dead, an even
greater one than the heroes
the epic dirges can recount.
Theater, before the casket even arrives
from wherever Grebo caskets come,
mind you, it will be two weeks
of mourning or even more, of eating
kola nuts, of chattering and grumbling,
and then the eldest son comes out,
screaming all the anger
he's built up for decades,
and the wives narrate in their own
anger, family feuds, unfolding itself
like a loose string, unrolling itself
before the mourning crowd.
Mind you, everyone says,
"Nyon-ne-nu-neh-oh," as if this taboo
had not been broken before many times.
"People don't do that — oh," they say
with all the poetic music
Grebo can carry on a single line.
Theater. "And you tell me, this is a funeral?"
The Klao people will lay out the dead
as if the dead were a specimen to behold,
as if the grave were not a journey,
as if this laying out was meant
to prepare the dead for a higher calling.
Mind you, this is not for the living.
Theater. This is a libation for the living-dead.
Loss
A Dirge for Thomas Wadeh Boah
Wadeh, when you were born, they named you Wadeh.
In Grebo, your name is "Sorrow." Wadeh, Junior, dead,
just four months after I discovered that you were
still alive out there in some faraway city in Nigeria.
Port Harcourt, oil city, the hot dusky sun, Harmattan.
This morning, news came that you have just died.
Emptiness. So I sit here at my computer, going over
photos of you. My Facebook page, holding onto
so many messages from you, jammed into my inbox,
messages, as if empowered by the urgency of a rushing
river, the river that you were. At home, we knew you
were the Wanderer. Wadeh, sorrow, pain, loss, always
in and out, between bordering towns, Cote d'Ivoire,
Guinea, coming and going, as if laying out the miles
between you, family and home was your life goal.
Two decades back. Home. Liberia, and my mind
unfolds the pounding urgency of war, bombs, flight,
the forever displaced people that we are. So you left
your children in a refugee camp somewhere in Guinea,
so far away from home, forever. Lost. And everyone
said, "Junior is dead." For how else could we explain
this abandonment of children and wife? We held on
to the emptiness of losing you as ghosts hold on to us,
burying you in our minds. But it is not the losing
that makes emptiness a hollow, a space in an endless
place, as if digging and digging to find gold or to define
gold, or in the finding of gold, you discover that gold
is only rust or not just rust, but loss. Loss, when the war
took you so far away from us, like a leaf, blown away,
and then, like a ghost, there you were again.
So we thought we had truly found you. Now they tell
us that your dead, burnt body cannot be claimed.
That the one who has moved on into the other world,
where so many years ago, your father journeyed,
where our fathers roam free of borders and country.
They say there was fire, so we cannot even gather
your burnt body, your light-light-skinned body that so
reminded us of Bai Hne, our great father, the remnants
of what the war could not consume, lost people, lost
dreams, the new people without a country. But how do
we accept this news without beholding your body?
What we do not see remains alive forever in the eye.
I'd like to keep you the way you were; 1989, walking,
half-running into my yard, Monrovia, that standstill calm
before the war, before the rebels took the city from us.
I wanted to keep you so I could retrieve you forever,
Wadeh, firstborn, named after your father, Sorrow.
I'd like to keep you always, the way only the heart can.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from When the Wanderers Come Home by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Book I. Coming Home So I Stand Here What Took Us to War Erecting Stones: January 2013 Looters of War 2011 Coming Home: A Poem for MT Send Me Some Black Clothes I Need Two Bodies The Creation And You Tell Me This Is a Funeral? Loss If You Have Never Been Married Becoming Ghost The Killed Ones The Cities We Lost A City of Ghosts July Rain I Go Home Song for Mariam Makeba When Monrovia Rises This Is the Real Leaving Book II. Colliding Worlds In My Dream Sometimes, I Close My Eyes Sandy: Love Song for the Hurricane Woman Tsunami: A Song for an Unknown Young Man For My Children, Growing Up in America You Wouldn’t Let Me Adopt My Dog: A Poem for Ade-Juah When I Grow Up The Inequality of Dogs Medellin from My Hotel Room Balcony Morocco, on the Way to London To Libya: February 2011 Sometimes I Wonder The Deer on My Lawn Leaves Are Leaving Us Again Book III. World (Un)/Breakable I Want to Be the Woman This Morning When I Was a Girl I’m Afraid of Emptiness Silence I Want Everything Finally, the Allergist I Dreamed On the Midnight Train First Class This Is Facebook A Room with a View Braiding Hair Losing Hair Hair 2014, My Mamma Never Knew You