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Literary Orphan Published These Two Poems By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and raised there and in her father’s home village of Tugbakeh, where she learned to speak Grebo in addition to English, the national language. In 1991, Wesley immigrated with her family to southern Michigan to escape the Liberian civil war. She earned a BA at the University of Liberia, an MS at Indiana University, and a PhD at Western Michigan University. Vulnerable in their combination of grief and levity, Wesley’s poems deal with family, community, and war. “What I try to do in my poetry is to show that the artist does not exist in isolation from his surroundings,” Wesley has stated in interviews.

The author of several collections of poetry, including Where the Road Turns (2010), The River Is Rising (2007), Crab Orchard Series in Poetry–winner Becoming Ebony (2003), and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (1998), her poems have also been featured in former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry.” —Bio culled from Poetry Foundation

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

 

Sometimes I see the world, scattered

in small brick shacks along the hillsides

far away in Colombia

 

where it is only the poor, at the peak

of the mountains. Medellin, holding on

so the city can find rest.

 

Sometimes, I see the poor in my Bai,

shoeless and old, his teeth threatening

to leave him if he continued on,

Continue reading here…

 

Main Photo: Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, altoona.psu.edu

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