Surrender

By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley 

So often, I want to make you;

roll you, reshape you, a ball of clay

after my say

I want to squeeze you, 

my play dough, an image,

into my image.

I want to melt you, shape you, like gold;

polish you, mold you into a charm

to be sold.

My little woodwork, carve you,

make you my Kissi ritual mask.

I want to hang you

so often, around these, my walls,

make you my little talisman,

swing you, my little magic wand.

My pungent, leafy voodoo,

my sum, my boiling pot of juju.

My little protective pin

about my fabric life, about my pieces.

I want to ride you, my cruising Pajaro.

Suddenly, there

you are, always God.

Now, it is your turn. here, roll me,

reshape me, pat me, mold me,

heating the clay on my flesh,

after your flesh.

Grip hold of my mascara cheeks, my charms

of gold bracelets, binding my life.

Melt all my magic wands,

my bulging, voodoo eyes.

Take hold of my big, bleeding heart,

my boiling pot of juju, my beads

of charms, my me.

And if I'm not yet surrendered,

my God, vanquish me.

*   *   *   *   *

Source: Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa

Where the Road Turns

By   Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

In this her fourth volume, I witness Patricia Jabbeh Wesley courageously dipping her pen into her own wound and splashing vivid imagery upon the canvas of her own skin. That is an illusion, for that pen is really a scalpel cutting the gangrenous and the rotten out of her nation's violated flesh. But that too is an illusion. That scalpel is a steel tongue in a powerful Grebo woman's mouth weaving a fine gauze from dirges, love songs, praise songs, fragments of aphoristic wisdom, fables, new myths, narrative and lyrical dialogues in order to bind our own wounded psyches.

Proud Grebo women's voices burst through her mouth to chastise depraved men who harvest babies to stoke diamond wars as they blaze through forests of dry human bones in their imported death chariots. Beyond celebrating these fiery taboo-breaking warrior women who are passionate about peace, justice, their right to forbidden fantasies, she also claims her place, though exiled, in the lineage. Condemned to bear upon her back her home, she is the strong earthen vessel that safeguards the essential spiritual Grebo values bequeathed to her by the village elders in a circle. Because moving is never a leaving, memories of home constantly surge through the poet's wry humor and wit that serve as balm for the ever-nagging pain.