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praise the Hennessy, the brown shine, the dull burn. praise the dare, the take it, the no face you’re supposed to make. praise the house, its many rooms, hardwood and butter leather couches; its richness. praise the rich, their friendship. praise the friends: the child of the well off, the child of the well off, the child of  well, the child of welfare, the child of welfare. praise the diversity but praise the Hennessy, and again,           and again.           praise the new year upon us. praise my stumble, the shaky eye, the fluid arm, but the steady hand. praise my hand, the burning it has. praise the dive into the gut of a friend; the dousing of my hand in his ribs. praise the softness of skin, the way it always gives. praise the pulling, the calming down. praise the fuck that, the jump back into all five of my friends fist first. praise all five of my friends pinning me into the thick carpet, knees in my back. praise my back, how it hurts and raises anyway, how it flips, how it’s the best friend of my fists. praise the swinging pool cue, how it whips air like a disobedient child, praise the disobedient and all the chilling           i won’t do. praise the child smile on my face, the fun plunging a knee into a cheek of my best friend. praise his blood, the brightness of it, a sun i bask in. praise my blood, the nose flowing wild with effort, the mess and taste of it, praise the swallowing, salt and its sweetness. praise the morning, the impossible blue, Midwestern  January above us. praise the blues dulled in my denim by all the brown. praise the brown shine, the dull burn. praise all six in my jeans, our salt and life sitting dry on my thighs mixing, refusing to wash away.

Oyehe heeeeeeeh. MotherPoet! Your fatha taught you to be bold. If something is true, keep doing it. Ah, you, Doctor Patricia Jabbeh Wesley! You are the mother of four children. Mama Wesley, you have raised four black human beings in this thicket called America. You, Grebo woman. You have done well. You have raised four human beings in this thicket of words and wordless slights. Ah, who can say you are timid? Who can say you do not know how to throw your voice into the air? And who would have pushed that air aside, if not for you? Who has come to the door asking for Liberian womanspeak poetry? Hehnnnn, they want to know, who is listening-o? Ayi! Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, we are standing on your shadow. Forgive us, mother. We have been crowing like johnny-come-latelies: Maonaka? Ndasvika panyika iyi nemakumbo angu, ndega. What! We are saying what? That we have arrived? Is it?

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other’s eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says,Take out your pencils. Begin. We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider. We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what’s on the other side. I know there’s something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables. Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need.

Praise the rain; the seagull dive The curl of plant, the raven talk— Praise the hurt, the house slack The stand of trees, the dignity— Praise the dark, the moon cradle The sky fall, the bear sleep— Praise the mist, the warrior name The earth eclipse, the fired leap— Praise the backwards, upward sky The baby cry, the spirit food— Praise canoe, the fish rush The hole for frog, the upside-down— Praise the day, the cloud cup The mind flat, forget it all— Praise crazy. Praise sad. Praise the path on which we're led. Praise the roads on earth and water. Praise the eater and the eaten. Praise beginnings; praise the end. Praise the song and praise the singer. Praise the rain; it brings more rain. Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

If I were in a book it would be the book in which some lesser angel bemoans the state of my soul and is comforted for it and is corrected for it by some greater angel who knows as the reader knows that it is not one’s soul that suffers the indignities of ignobility: the inability to curb the petty smallness of spirit, ungladness in the company of bureaucrats, anger’s decay, in the sense that my soul itself cannot be harmed nor tarnished though it can witness my sorrow on finding that illness alters me from the self I thought I’d more or less known. What can one do about one’s nature? I look at the spider that’s finally restrung its great wheel away from the door. I’d like to close the door, go away, leaving the spider be. I’d like to preclude the possibility of angel, as of prey.

Oh you saints, Let me enter your society, If only as a statistician. You’re old, Perhaps the years are Getting you down by now, Laying themselves over you In layers of color. Just let me take care Of your dirty work in All the nooks and crannies. For example I could Swallow light At the Last Supper And exhale your halos After the devotionals. From time to time, At a distance of half a wall, I could Form my hands into a horn And shout, Now for the believers, Now for the unbelievers Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change— this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

I want a god as my accomplice who spends nights in houses of ill repute and gets up late on Saturdays a god who whistles through the streets and trembles before the lips of his lover a god who waits in line at the entrance of movie houses and likes to drink café au lait a god who spits blood from tuberculosis and doesn’t even have enough for bus fare a god knocked unconscious by the billy club of a policeman at a demonstration a god who pisses out of fear before the flaring electrodes of torture a god who hurts to the last bone and bites the air in pain a jobless god a striking god a hungry god a fugitive god an exiled god an enraged god a god who longs from jail for a change in the order of things I want a more godlike god

For all the pain passed down the genes or latent in the very grain of being; for the lordless mornings, the smear of spirit words intuit and inter; for all the nightfall neverness inking into me even now, my prayer is that a mind blurred by anxiety or despair might find here a trace of peace.

Echo of the clocktower, footstep in the alleyway, sweep of the wind sifting the leaves. Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur of autumn's opulence, blade of lightning harvesting the sky. Keeper of the small gate, choreographer of entrances and exits, midnight whisper traveling the wires. Seducer, healer, deity or thief, I will see you soon enough— in the shadow of the rainfall, in the brief violet darkening a sunset— but until then I pray watch over him as a mountain guards its covert ore and the harsh falcon its flightless young.