Word of Mouth
"The Women in My Family"
by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
The women in my family were supposed
to be men. Heavy body men, brawny
arms and legs, thick muscular chests and the heart,
smaller than a speck of dirt.
They come ready with muscled arms and legs,
big feet, big hands, big bones,
a temper that’s hot enough to start World War Three.
We pride our scattered strings
of beards under left chins
as if we had anything to do with creating ourselves.
The women outnumber the men
in my father’s family, leaving our fathers roaming
wild nights in search of baby-spitting concubines
to save the family name.
It is an abomination when there are no boy children.
At the birth of each one of us girls, a father sat prostrate
in the earth, in sackcloth and ash,
wailing.
It is abomination when there are no men
in the family, when mothers can’t bring forth
boy children in my clan.
Watch Jabbeh Wesley read her poem, "Monrovia, Revisited" (A QuickTime streamed movie will open in a smaller browser window.)
Read a Q & A with Jabbeh Wesley.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Ph.D., is assistant professor of English at Penn State Altoona, pjw14@psu.edu. Her books of poetry include Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (1998) and Becoming Ebony (2003).
