Monrovia, Revisited

This is the city that killed my mother;
its crooked legs bent
from standing too long,
waiting so angry people can kill
themselves too.

No grass along street corners—
so many potholes from years of war.
Immigrants from all
over the globe used to come here
on tender feet,

in search of themselves.
Abandoned city—
a place that learned
how to cry out loud even though
nobody heard.

This is the city where I first learned
how to lose myself.
Windy city, blue ocean city.
They say a city on the hill
cannot be hid.

The city of salty winds, salty tears,
where stubborn people still hold
us hostage after Charles Taylor.
You should come here if you want
to know how sacred
pain can be.

All Dirges Have Ceased

All dirges shall cease at the striking of the clock,
at seven, when dusk comes creeping with death.
No more dirges will be sung for those taken away
or slaughtered or cramped together in camps
around the world—this our war.
Until we all wither like charred remains
of brush after the wildfire burns itself out.
And all the living creatures that once owned
the forest lie about in dry ash.

A snail shell, half burnt, a rattlesnake, coiled,
after the fire has eaten away its flesh.
A scorpion and her entire family, as if smoked
or parched hard for the ground.
And animals that used to run wild
in the jungles are all dead. But who will dare
mourn the passing of mere animals when
humans are still perishing and being smoked
and buried alive and put on the line

for the executioner, who is our warlord?
Where is everyone as kwashiorkor saps away
our war children one by one?
Our warlord tells us we cannot wail or mourn
or sing a dirge and wear black lappas or bury
the dead or send a letter abroad to tell those
who do not know about our dead.

Today when the sun comes into the kitchen
through the kitchen door or window, let us
catch its shadow, its rays; let us lock up the sun
in a box, in a steel box, and put a padlock
on the box. So tomorrow, there will be no sunlight
for the whole world. Tomorrow.
So there will be no more sunlight tomorrow.

The Women in My Family

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.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, there were women, and all things,
creeping and non-creeping, were good.

That was before time could tell daylight from night.
When men could speak women's tongues; before

the sea turned blue and took up rolling, foaming, like
a big glass of fresh palm wine. Before oceans learned

to rise and fall, before rivers were first named rivers.
Before they named the Cavalla River, Cavalla, after

the fish or the fish after the town, or the town after
the river. When Cape Palmas, where I come from,

became Cape Palmas; before there was even a cape
or palm trees. Before Cape Palmas began to give birth

to palm trees that sprouted with fat bottoms and began
to rise, and the coconut learned to be sister to the nut

palm and the nut palm to the bamboo palm, the bamboo
palm to the thatched; or when their grandfather made

them blood relations, or straw relations or bamboo
relations, or cabbage relations or long, thin leaves

relations, or whatever it is that makes them seem
identical twins. But bamboo knows how to prick my

finger when I touch it with an angry heart; the palm tree
will prick lightly, while the coconut stands there, tall.

Coconut breasts hanging from its chest, or head,
or whatever. The way a bamboo grove used to prick

our toes when Mudi and I wandered under its swampy
territory. That was before the time when women took

upon themselves to birth babies, even though men
knew how to, or before men went around boasting

of having this many children and this many sons upon
their mere fingers. Iyeeh says men really birthed babies

then, and women boasted of being the fathers of babies
then, and the children ran for their fathers like they do

today for their mothers when a father calls them
for a whip with a cane. That was long before the car

road bulldozed the giant walnut, the oak, chopping up
the towns and the forests into roads, and rubber trees

sprang up where the forests were, and the coffee
became a tree, becoming first cousin to the cocoa,

and the palm nuts went to the city to be sold for coins.
Suddenly, we girls grew wings like pepper birds, no,

no, like eagles, or like jet planes, and could fly or hop
on a truck to the city where street lights cannot tell

the villager from the city dweller; where a man cannot
tell his wife from his lover; his inside children from his

outside children; where all have lost their hearts to the bars
and the dangling lights, and people fight on street corners;

and after all that, I and all the girls of the world learned
to run wild too, like wild flowers, no, no, wild, like men.

All the women of the world, becoming just men.

Surrender

So often, I want to make you;
roll you, reshape you, a ball of clay
after my say
I want to squeeze you,
my play dough, an image,
into my image.
I want to melt you, shape you, like gold;
polish you, mold you into a charm
to be sold.

My little woodwork, carve you,
make you my Kissi ritual mask.
I want to hang you
so often, around these, my walls,
make you my little talisman,
swing you, my little magic wand.

My pungent, leafy voodoo,
my sum, my boiling pot of juju.
My little protective pin
about my fabric life, about my pieces.
I want to ride you, my cruising Pajaro.
Suddenly, there
you are, always God.

Now, it is your turn. here, roll me,
reshape me, pat me, mold me,
heating the clay on my flesh,
after your flesh.

Grip hold of my mascara cheeks, my charms
of gold bracelets, binding my life.
Melt all my magic wands,
my bulging, voodoo eyes.
Take hold of my big, bleeding heart,
my boiling pot of juju, my beads
of charms, my me.
And if I'm not yet surrendered,
my God, vanquish me.