Praise Song for Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
By Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Oyehe heeeeeeeh. MotherPoet!
Your fatha taught you to be bold.
If something is true, keep doing it.
Ah, you, Doctor Patricia Jabbeh Wesley!
You are the mother of four children.
Mama Wesley, you have raised
four black human beings in this thicket called
America. You, Grebo woman. You
have
done
well.
You have raised four human beings
in this thicket of words
and wordless slights.
Ah, who can say you are timid?
Who can say you do not know how to throw your voice into the air?
And who would have pushed that air aside, if not for you?
Who has come to the door asking for Liberian womanspeak poetry?
Hehnnnn, they want to know, who is listening-o?
Ayi! Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, we are standing
on your shadow. Forgive us, mother.
We have been crowing like johnny-come-latelies:
Maonaka? Ndasvika panyika iyi nemakumbo angu, ndega.
What! We are saying what?
That
we
have
arrived?
Is it?
Copyright Credit: Tsitsi Ella Jaji, "Praise Song for Patricia Jabbeh Wesley" from Beating the Graves. Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.
Source: Beating the Graves (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)