Sample Poetry
Dr. Wesley has had dozens of individual poems, memoir articles, and short stories anthologized and published in literary magazines in the United States, in Africa, and across the world in such magazines as Harvard Review, Transition, Crab Orchard Review, Harvard Divinity Review, & Prairie Schooner, heres some samples of her work.
Black Woman Selling Her Home in America
BY PATRICIA JABBEH WESLEY
After the show, I can reenter my home
and take myself back.
From room to room, I examine my home
to see if the possible buyers
did not take a piece of shredded
carpet with them, did not pull down a window blind,
and yes, the television is still standing.
But through the box walls, I feel their fingernails
rising out of the corners of my rooms,
their presence, these strangers, these spies,
these unknown people who have walked
through my home,
have touched my private places in my home,
done this abominable thing of touring
my bedroom, my sleeping place, where at night
I revisit my ancestors
over and over. My bedroom, where I can steal
away at night and meet
my mother in the other world.
In my country, you do not sell your home.
You do not sell your home to strangers.
You do not move away so others can possess
your possessions. You plant feet
and umbilical cords deep. I have been
selling my home for a year now.
I have been selling myself for years now,
and my possible buyers do not seem to see
the house they cannot see.
Sometimes I wish my home was not as black
as me, that the skin
of my aluminum sidings were not gray
or black like me. After the show,
I come back home, walking like a broken
woman. I walk in fearfully,
letting myself into my own home
in small particles of dust. I walk in like
you walk into a haunted house,
holding onto foot and arm. Sometimes, I can
see their large eyes, these buyers, who
walk in with ugly coats, who come in,
their prying eyes, afraid something may spring
at them when they finally move into my home.
(Source: Poetry (June 2022) winner of the Levinson Poetry Prize from Poetry Foundation)
Healing Will Come: Elegy after Natural Disaster
BY PATRICIA JABBEH WESLEY
She searches the ruins like someonewho has wandered so far away.
Six children, I had six children,
she tells herself. All around, her world
has become twigs of splintered pieces
of a long-ago life,
not so long ago.
She lays down one child alongside another
child, alongside another,
but then, she stands there, wiping her
eyes, looking ahead, turning over
the ruins of pieces of a place that once
was, in the ruins of a life that once was.
But they were six children, she says,
six, dead, or alive.
A mother knows what it means
to have six, not three, but six living
children, not three only, dead,
and there, the tears, calming for now,
calming, for now.
Always.
What would I do without tears,
I used to ask myself in another world.
What would she do without tears,
I now ask myself, and now,
the water from her eyes, unlike
the water that has taken
everything away with it.
Somewhere, always, somewhere,
there’s a day when healing comes.
Wasn’t this what life was supposed to bring,
after death, the healing?
Healing refuses to be lost to death,
I say, healing will come.
(Source: Poetry (June 2022)- Winner of the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine)
One Day Love Song for the Newly Divorced
BY PATRICIA JABBEH WESLEYOne day, you will awake from your covering
and that heart of yours will be totally mended,
and there will be no more burning within.
The owl, calling in the setting of the sun
and the deer path, all erased.
And there will be no more need for love
or lovers or fears of losing lovers
and there will be no more burning timbers
with which to light a new fire,
and there will be no more husbands or people
related to husbands, and there will be no more
tears or reason to shed your tears.
You will be as mended as the bridge
the working crew has just reopened.
The thick air will be vanquished with the tide
and the river that was corrupted by lies
will be cleansed and totally free.
And the rooster will call in the setting sun
and the sun will beckon homeward,
hiding behind your one tree that was not felled.
Poem copyright ©2010 by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley from her fourth book of poetry, Where the Road Turns, Autumn House Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Patricia Jabbeh Wesley and the publisher.
The Blessing
By: PATRICIA JABBEH WESLEYLet your days ahead be sprinkled with laughter
and with laughter, peace.
May all you touch spring forth with freshness.
Find time to giggle and dance and jump,
and watch the setting of the sun.
When you wake up, wonder out loud
about the sun’s rays, about the darkening
of the morning, about the fog over the hills,
about your babies down the hall,
about the neighbor and her dog. Wonder
at the stars; wonder and wonder why
you are so blessed and why is it you are
among those of the earth who have
more than their allotted air for breathing.
Wonder why the cat meows and why
the dog wags its tail.
Wonder and wonder why dew falls
at night and about the squirrel’s fleeting stare.
Make laughter come alive in your home.
And when you touch someone, let that touch
be real, and I mean, real, my friend.
Walk gently on soft ground, and when
you walk on a bare rock, step hard, this
life is precious. May your year follow only
through a clear path, and please, when you walk,
let it be with God, my love, let it be with God.
(Copyright, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Where the Road Turns , Autumn House Press, 2010)