Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

MY NEIGHBORS

In suburbia, you know that your neighbor is dead 
when one day, there are long lines of cars piled up, 

bumper to bumper, their driveway, clogged along 
street corners you must navigate to find your way 

out of a neighborhood of silent rows of houses, dead 
yards of dying people. All their lost children who 

have been wandering and leaving traces of themselves 
everywhere else, except at this driveway, now, finally 

home, but you do not know who they are or why. 
Because they were lost also to their mother or father, 

who is now dead. You know your neighbor is dead 
when after the long lines of cars, suddenly, a truck sits 

in your neighbor’s driveway, an estate management truck. 
They will be selling all of your neighbor’s things, 

chairs and beds, and stuff, but you still do not know 
if your neighbor died swallowing a tablet or whether 

your neighbor had a heart attack or not or whether 
your neighbor is really dead or if you even had a neighbor 

in that house. But today, your drive to work is limited 
by the arrival of their unknown, invisible children. 

Someday this week, the burial that you will not hear 
About will take place. In America, you should not know 

your neighbor or care to worry about your neighbor. 
You should not go to your neighbor’s doorstep and knock 

on their door to see if they are not well, dead or alive. 
You should not check on the line of cars just down 

the street or get out of your car or ring the cold doorbell. 
This is a place where people hide guns at their doorways, 

where you may be killed for stopping to say, “Hello.” 
Like another woman next door to this now newly dead 

neighbor who used to stop you on your morning walk 
to chat with you, talking about the many years since 

she’d lost her husband, and how she used to have a life 
of ballroom dances and parties, long evening gowns, wine

glasses and travels, how she once sang in her church 
choir, how she was once a center of the town before 

her children grew up and disappeared into the old wind 
that takes American children far away, until their parents 

are dead and gone. And then they return for the estate sale, 
for the fight for property and wares and money. She used 

to stop you, so, one day you wanted to give her a book. 
You wanted to find out, as she said, if she would read 

a book on African poetry, so you placed the book 
in your car, waiting for a day to stop and ring the doorbell, 

and you stopped in front of her driveway, and wondered. 
What if you rang the cold doorbell, what if someone 

saw you ringing the doorbell with your dark skin, your 
old black hair, your African accent, and called the police? 

So you didn’t stop, you didn’t go in, and then one day, 
you did not see the line of cars; you did not see the old 

children return; you did not see the signs of her dying. 
One day you saw the sign, “For Sale,” so, you stopped. 

You wanted to know if they had taken your neighbor 
to the Rest Home. But a neighbor said that she was dead.

Dead. Amidst the silent houses, estate sales, the aloneness 
of this new world, and children not coming back home.

TUGBAKEH

    AFTER TOO MANY YEARS

I was so long gone, when I finally arrived
in my hometown, 
I could not find the road back home.

Time had swallowed up what used to be 
the street into Mission Town, Tugbakeh,
down to my uncles’ homes

where the fireplace was burning hot,
children hollering as night came in slowly 
and the sun returned to its own home.

I could not find Ngalun, where we dipped
our pails and our feet at the same time,
the way only villagers still do. 

Today, I could not separate the mission 
from the town or from the graveyard, 
where the dead waited for God 

to resurrect them on the day of resurrection, 
on the day of our ancestral gods 
meeting the other god, bestowed 
upon us by the new-comers.

I did not find anyone I knew or who knew me.
I did not find the town I used to know, 
and for a second, a woman thought 

I was my Uncle Tugba’s daughter, 
and greeted me the way you greet 
a wanderer from a far country.

She did not know me, and the man who 
welcomed us out of roads that had become 
only footpaths, and offered us seats, 

and sat and sat as if this were not 
my father’s homeland, as if this were not 
my father’s homestead.

When I finally saw my hometown, I had 
become the lost daughter. 
I had been so long gone, they did not 
offer me kola nuts. 

As if the town had run out of kola nuts.
As if all the kola nut trees had been 
burned in that same ugly war. 

I had been so long gone, it was two days 
before I realized the tragedy
of being denied kola nuts in my own town.

I forgot how abominable the sin of not offering 
kola nuts to a daughter on her homecoming, 
how abominable that empty greeting. 

I lost all sense that the man in charge 
of our fathers’ homestead had forgotten 
how to find the kola nuts, 
how to slice each half of the kola nut, 

how to wash and place the sliced pieces 
in the kola nut bowl, how to offer the spiced 
pepper, how to welcome home, the daughter 
who had been too long gone.

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is the author of six books of poetry, including her recent, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, (Autumn House Press, 2020), When the Wanderers Come Home, Where the Road Turns, The River is Rising, among others. Her poems have been published or featured across the world and in the US in magazines and anthologies, including Harvard Review, Transition, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times Magazine, Black Renaissance Noire, among others, and her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, and Finnish. She is Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Literature at Penn State University.