Editorial Note by Marguerite L. Harrold
Introduction by Gabeba Baderoon
Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (1998)
Africa
I
I Am Not Dekuah
Tugbakeh: A Song
The Storm
Child Soldier
Finding My Family
War Children
Warrior
Have You Been Felled?
Oh Rivers: November 7, 1995
What Dirge
II
Strange Lovers
Heritage
Big Ma
Knowing
To: Bai Jabbeh
In Memory of Cousin Hazel: A Dirge
African Death
Take Me Way Back
Monrovia Women
Nyanken Hne
They Say
I'm Still Thinking . . .
Outside Child
This Rooster Will Come Home to Roost
III
One of These Days
Minority
My Wife Brings Home Another Husband
Surrender
When I Get to Heaven
I Smell Home
In This House
To Michigan
Homecoming
Envoi
The Visiting Artist
Becoming Ebony (2003)
I
My Birth at the Doorpost
I Used to Own This Town
Get Out of Here, Boys!
Requiem for Auntie
Today Is Already Too Much
For Marie Antoinette
II
In the Beginning
This Is What I Tell My Daughter
War Baby
The Moon Poem
They Want to Rise Up
Elegy to West Point Fishermen
III
Coming Home to Iyeeh
A Dirge for Charles Taylor
Around the Mountains
Elegy for Dessie
Transfiguration
When I Meet Moses
For Robert Frost
The Corrupt Shall Rise Incorruptible
We've Done It All
The World in Long Lines
All the Soft Things of Earth
Becoming Ebony
IV
For My Husband
Wandering Child
Small Desires
When I Rise to Look the Sunshine in Its Bare Eye
A Poem for My Father
In This Town
My Neighbors' Dogs
A Letter to My Brother Coming to America
My New Insurance Plan
These Are the Reasons the Living Live
MT, Turning Thirteen
Winter Street
A Snowwoman in Her Dying Hour
I Now Wander
I Am Acquainted with Waiting
The River Is Rising (2007)
To Set Everything Right
I. Those Who Survived
Lamentation After Fourteen Years
This Hill Will Get You There
At Galilee
The River Is Rising
In Case of Water Landing
After Deer Season
Bringing Closure
One of These Days, We Should Give Her a Medal
In Michigan
Memories
Shakespeare 550
Four Tibetan Monks on a Wall at the Arts Council
Tomorrow, We Will Go Out into the Streets
Blessed Are the Sinful for They Shall See God
Taking Possession
At Point Loma
II. Ruined City
Remembering Sodom
In the Ruined City: A Poem for Monrovia
Searching for Margaret
City
What the Land Carver Said from the Sky
Until the Plane Drops
Retriever
All Dirges Have Ceased
An Elegy for the St. Peter's Church Massacred
The Morning After: An Elegy
Ceasefire Christmas—1990
For Kwame Nkrumah
If the World Ceases to Be Now
Something Death Cannot Know
Under the Rubble
III. Umbilical Cords
Coming Home: For Besie-Nyesuah
When My Daughter Tells Me She Has a Boyfriend
Monrovia Revisited
August 11, 2003
Untitled Pieces at the Corner Bar
In a Moment When the World Stops
After the Memorial
Leaving: A Poem for Gee
While I Wait for the War
IV. Woman
In the Making of a Woman
Taboo
A Winding Trail
Stories
Ruined Trails
Stranger Woman
Mammie Wata
The Women in My Family
For Ma Nmano Jabbeh: A Dirge
To a Mother, After Passing
For the Lucky Wife
Women at the Tomb
Poem Written from a Single Snapshot
Broken World
Where the Road Turns (2010)
Prelude: Biography When the Wanderers Come Home
I. Love Songs
Love Song Before the Sun Goes Down
For My Husband After So Many Years
Love Song Before the War Ends
Love Song When Musu Answers Her Lover
Cheede, My Bride: A Grebo Man Laments—1985
Each Waking Moment
So This Is Where the Roads Merge
A Memorial for Herb Scott: One Year Later
If I Could Write a Poem about Love
Love Song for Lost Moments of Youth
Woman Praying
A Lover, Lost at Sea
Love Songs of Taboos
One Day
Everyone Should Die on a Friday
II. Taboos
In the Beginning II
Making Happy People
Last Night in My Dream
My Mother Came to Visit Me Last Night
Recollections
Ghosts Don't Go Away Just Like That
Reburial: To Lament of Drums
The Resurrection of the Ancestors
A Poem Before You Die
My Auntie's Woman-Lappa Husband
Step Lightly, God: A Memorial
These Are the Ways of Our People
Come, the Warrior Is No More
III. Wanderings
We Departed Our Homelands and We Came . . .
Where the Road Turns
Been Wandering Too Long: A Song
Monrovia, 2008
Mystery
For My Infant Daughter Soon After Birth
Deh Kon Tee (Everything Has Its Time)
Facebook
For the Wandering Child
Times Gone
I Like Your Wars
Funeral Rehearsal
At My Backyard
There's Another New Orleans
The Sea Has No Bridge
IV. Tomorrow
The People Walking in Darkness
Spring Is That Woman
Medellin, 2007
What Does It Feel Like?
There's Nothing You Can Do
What's All This Fuss About?
Coming Home
To Be a Woman
There Will Come Time
It's Too Late Now
Some Things You Never Stop Looking For
After So Long, We No Longer Send Photos
I Came to Your Funeral Today: A Dirge
The Queen of Sheba and the Wisdom of Solomon
Inequality in Hell
Waiting
The Blessing
When the Wanderers Come Home (2016)
Book I. Coming Home
So I Stand Here
What Took Us to War
Erecting Stones: January 2013
Looters of War
Coming Home: A Poem for MT
Send Me Some Black Clothes
I Need Two Bodies
The Creation
And You Tell Me This Is a Funeral?
Loss
If You Have Never Been Married
Becoming Ghost
The Killed Ones
The Cities We Lost
A City of Ghosts
July Rain
I Go Home
Song for Mariam Makeba
When Monrovia Rises
This Is the Real Leaving
Book II. Colliding Worlds
In My Dream
Sometimes, I Close My Eyes
Sandy: Love Song for the Hurricane Woman
Tsunami: A Song for an Unknown Young Man
For My Children, Growing Up in America
You Wouldn't Let Me Adopt My Dog: A Poem for Ade-Juah
When I Grow Up
The Inequality of Dogs
Medellin from My Hotel Room Balcony
Morocco, on the Way to London
To Libya: February 2011
Sometimes I Wonder
The Deer on My Lawn
Leaves Are Leaving Us Again
Book III. World (Un)/Breakable
I Want to Be the Woman
This Morning
When I Was a Girl
I'm Afraid of Emptiness
Silence
I Want Everything
Finally, the Allergist
I Dreamed
On the Midnight Train
First Class
This Is Facebook
A Room with a View
Braiding Hair
Losing Hair
Hair
2014, My Mamma Never Knew You
Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems (2020)
Some of Us Are Made of Steel
Praise Song for My Children
Grace
I Saw Men Leaving My Mother
Fire and Rain
Praise Song for Sister Marie Morais-Garber
November 12, 2015
The New Year: 2018
Holding Back
At the Borderline
Maybe
They Killed a Black Man in Brooklyn Today
On September 11
The Unbuckling: A Dirge
Too Many Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost
After the Election
Poem Written from Failed Chat Notes
The Meeting Place
Poem Written in My Doctor's Office
Suburbia
TSA Check
The Woman Next Door
An Elegy for Art Smith
When I Meet My Ancestors
Source Acknowledgments
Glossary
