Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is the first major poet out of Africa’s oldest republic of Liberia since the nation’s founding and remains one of the most important poets from Africa. Spanning two decades of work, the poems in this collection tell stories of Wesley’s homeland that would have otherwise been forgotten. This volume published this month and is in the African Poetry Book series.

Dieh, I come knocking.
Clansmen, I come calling.
I come crawling at your doors.
There is a matter
from my heart.
Gather your sons from afar
at Tuwa Kai.
Kwee must come to town today.

Let your sons know my heart.
My heart bleeds blood
thicker than blood.
I am not Dekuah;
let me live.

You call me Dekuah,
Mundi, Sejlah, Kahien,
but I am not.
I’ve never been born before.
At the coming out of the new moon
I was conceived
to new rice fields, corn on cobs
upon mothers’ backs, fresh,
born in the fragrance at harvest.
I am not Dekuah.

Why celebrate my coming
with black lappas and strange names?
Do you hope by this I will find
my stool in my mother’s house?

Where is the Grebo mark, slashed
on to your last Dekuah’s fore-face,
the gash at her earlobes?
My name is Nehklon.
Let me live.

Do you reward me,
a new life,
giving me names fit only for death?
Who says I am the yellow-skinned girl
that wiggled in your arms last year?
How could I be the son
who swallowed his breath
before he was washed?
Why trouble me with sharp blades?
Will these poured libations purify the earth?
Will the baobab drink
this wine poured at its roots?
I am not Dekuah.

Should I take a stand
in the marketplace, at the center
of town? Knock old pans together,
blow a horn, a town crier?
Should I pound the drums,
sit upon the king’s stool?
I am not Dekuah.
Let me live.

Is there none
to pound the drums for a child
forsaken at the birthing house
after the cutting of the navel string?
Old women, their aged wisdom

refuse the dawn
creeping upon us.
Should I pound my own drums?
Dieh, Bodior, kinsfolk,
take me to town.
I am not Dekuah.