Jericho Brown
The New Testament
PICADOR
In memory of
Messiah Demery
(1981–2008)
One’s lover—or one’s brother, or one’s enemy—sees the face you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary reactions.
JAMES BALDWIN
Contents
I
Colosseum
Romans 12:1
Heartland
Another Elegy
Cain
Labor
The Interrogation
Paradise
To Be Seen
Langston’s Blues
’N’em
II
The Ten Commandments
Homeland
Host
Football Season
The Rest We Deserve
What the Holy Do
Reality Show
Willing to Pay
Dear Dr. Frankenstein
Another Elegy
Motherland
I Corinthians 13:11
Hustle
III
Another Elegy
Obituary
Psalm 150
A Living
After the Rapture
Hebrews 13
Angel
Receiving Line
Make-Believe
Found: Messiah
Another Angel
Eden
Another Elegy
At the End of Hell
Heart Condition
Nativity
Apocrypha
I
Colosseum
I don’t remember how I hurt myself,
The pain mine
Long enough for me
To lose the wound that invented it
As none of us knows the beauty
Of our own eyes
Until a man tells us they are
Why God made brown. Then
That same man says he lives to touch
The smoothest parts, suggesting our
Surface area can be understood
By degrees of satin. Him I will
Follow until I am as rough outside
As I am within. I cannot locate the origin
Of slaughter, but I know
How my own feels, that I live with it
And sometimes use it
To get the living done,
Because I am what gladiators call
A man in love—love
Being any reminder we survived.
Romans 12:1
I will begin with the body,
In the year of our Lord,
Porous and wet, love-wracked
And willing: in my 23rd year,
A certain obsession overtook
My body, or I should say,
I let a man touch me until I bled,
Until my blood met his hunger
And so was changed, was given
A new name
As is the practice among my people
Who are several and whole, holy
And acceptable. On the whole
Hurt by me, they will not call me
Brother. Hear me coming,
And they cross their legs. As men
Are wont to hate women,
As women are taught to hate
Themselves, they hate a woman
They smell in me, every muscle
Of her body clenched
In fits beneath men
Heavy as heaven—my body,
Dear dying sacrifice, desirous
As I will be, black as I am.
Heartland
This is the book of three
Diseases. Close it, and you’re caught
Running from my life, nearer its end now
Sick in his blood, left lung, and mind.
I think of him mornings
I wake panting like a runner after
His best time. He sweats. He stops
Facing what burned. The house
That graced this open lot was
A red brick. Children played there—
Two boys, their father actually
Came home. Mama cooked
As if she had a right to
The fire in her hands, to the bread I ate
Before I saw doctors who help me
Fool you into believing
I do anything other than the human thing.
We breathe until we don’t.
Every last word is contagious.
Another Elegy
Expect death. In every line,
Death is a metaphor that stands
For nothing, represents itself,
No goods for sale. It enters
Whether or not your house
Is dirty. Whether or not
You are clean, you arrive late
Because you don’t believe her
When, sobbing as usual, she
Calls to say if you don’t stop
Your brother, she will kill him
This time. Why rush? By now,
You think she likes it, his hands
Slapping her seven shades of red.
Besides, your brother is much
Bigger than you—once you tried
Pulling him off the woman he loves
And lost a tooth. Expect to lose
Again as you stand for nothing
Over his body, witness
Or reporter, murderer or kin.
Cain
First, a conversation. Now,
A volcano. Call me quick-
Tempered vegan. Turnip
Lover. Fruit licker. Mound
Maker. Quiet. I can predict
An earthquake. I can cook
A rose. I’m first to kill
A weed. The collards
Should come quick this year.
The beans may be lean.
I plant seeds and wait
All winter to eat. Some
Slaughter sheep for dinner.
Some chew leaves. Firstborn
And patient, I give ground
Color. Pull pink from
Green. Azalea, vibrant
As a lamb’s tongue. My kid
Brother killed one, but I
Dug the hole, soil still
Young, lava beneath it
Near each finger when little
Brothers tortured most
Of God’s creatures, and small
Men watched them bleed.
Labor
I spent what light Saturday sent sweating
And learned to cuss cutting grass for women
Kind enough to say they couldn’t tell the damned
Difference between their mowed lawns
And their vacuumed carpets just before
Handing over a five-dollar bill rolled tighter
Than a joint and asking me in to change
A few lightbulbs. I called those women old
Because they wouldn’t move out of a chair
Without my help or walk without a hand
At the base of their backs. I called them
Old, and they must have been; they’re all dead
Now, dead and in the earth I once tended.
The loneliest people have the earth to love
And not one friend their own age—only
Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss
Them around, women they want to please
And pray for the chance to say please to.
I don’t do that kind of work anymore. My job
Is to look at the childhood I hated and say
I once had something to do with my hands.
The Interrogation
I. WHERE
In that world, I was a black man.
Now, the bridge burns and I
Am as absent as what fire
Leaves behind. I thought we ran
To win the race. My children swear
We ran to end it. I’d show them
The starting point, but no sky here
Allows for rain. The water infects
Us, and every day, the air darkens…
The air, the only black thing
Of concern—
Who cares what color I was?
II. CROSS-EXAMINATION
Do you mean love?
Certainly a way of loving.
Did it hurt?
When doesn’t it?
When death enters a child’s room,
The child feels a draft.
So you chose for it to hurt.
I chose my brother over my desire
To be invisible.
We thought your brother was dead…
He is.
And his death made you
Visible?
You only see me
When I carry a man on my back.
But you arrived alone.
That wasn’t me.
That was the man who lost
My brother.
III. STREET DIRECTIONS
Will black men still love me
If white ones stop wanting me
Dead? Will white men stop
Wanting me dead? Will men
Like me stop killing men like
You? Which made us brothers—
That you shielded my body
With yours or that you found
Me here, dying on the pavement,
And held my empty hand?
IV. REDIRECT
Tell us, then, how did that man lose your brother?
I imagine
I lost him in the fire.
The record suggests
You lost him to a bullet.
The record was written
In my first language. The bullet is
How I lost myself.
And this preoccupation with color,
Was that before or after you lost yourself?
The women who raised me referred to Jesus
As “our elder brother.”
And what about race?
What you call a color I call
A way.
Forgive us. We don’t mean to laugh.
It’s just that black is,
After all, the absence of color.
V. FAIRY TALE
Say the shame I see inching like steam
Along the streets will never seep
Beneath the doors of this bedroom,
And if it does, if we dare to breathe,
Tell me that though the world ends us,
Lover, it cannot end our love
Of narrative. Don’t you have a story
For me?—like the one you tell
With fingers over my lips to keep me
From sighing when—before the queen
Is kidnapped—the prince bows
To the enemy, handing over the horn
Of his favorite unicorn like those men
Brought, bought, and whipped until
They accepted their masters’ names.
VI. MULTIPLE-CHOICE
Metal makes for a chemical reaction.
Now that my wrists are cuffed, I am
Not like a citizen. What touches me
Claims contamination. What
A shame. A sham. When the police come
They come in steel boots. Precious
Metal. They want me kicked,
So kick me they do. I cannot say
They love me. But don’t they seek me out
As a lover would, each with both hands
Bringing me to my knees, under God,
Indivisible? I did not have to be born
Here. Men in every nation pray
And some standing and some flat
On their backs. Pray luscious
Silver. Pray Christmas. A chain
A chain. Even if it’s pretty. Even around
The neck. I cannot say what they love
Is me with a new bald fist in my mouth.
Pray platinum teeth. Show me
A man who tells his children
The police will protect them
And I’ll show you the son of a man
Who taught his children where
To dig. Not me. Couldn’t be. Not
On my knees. No citizen begs
To find anything other than forgiveness.
VII. LANDMARK
What Angel of Death flies by each house, waving
My brother’s soul in front of windows like a toy—
A masked, muscle-bound action figure with fists
We wanted when we were children—some light
Item, a hero our family could never afford?
Paradise
That story I told about suffering
Was a lie. I never wandered
The woods with a box of matches.
Truth is I was born in the forest,
And there, I ran the weather.
Deer left apples in my hand, so
I didn’t think to cook the deer.
The secret of my life was
My life, hair falling past my neck,
Beyond my back. I can’t say
The nights grew cold, but Lord,
I was bored. What words I spoke
I yawned. And while I claimed
To have walked away hearing a voice
Or a fiddle, that too is untrue.
When a man leaves, he leaves looking
For more languages than there are
Tongues. When a boy leaves, we
Call him a man. You know that story
As well as you know my smile, how
It fit my face once I cut each tooth
In your well-wrought world, right
Along with this scar and this
One and this one and this…
To Be Seen
Forgive me for taking the tone of a preacher.
You understand, a dying man
Must have a point—not that I am
Dying exactly. My doctor tells me I’ll live
Longer than most since I see him
More than most. Of course, he cannot be trusted
Nor can any man
Who promises you life for looking his way. Promises
Come from the chosen: a lunatic,
The whitest dove—those who hear
The voice of God and other old music. I’m not
Chosen. I only have a point like anyone
Paid to bring bad news: a preacher, a soldier,
The doctor. We talk about God
Because we want to speak
In metaphors. My doctor clings to the metaphor
Of war. It’s always the virus
That attacks and the cells that fight or die
Fighting. Hell, I remember him saying the word
Siege when a rash returned. Here
I am dying while
He makes a battle of my body—anything to be seen
When all he really means is to grab me by the chin
And, like God the Father, say through clenched teeth,
Look at me when I’m talking to you.
Your healing is not in my hands, though
I touch as if to make you whole.
Langston’s Blues
“O Blood of the River songs,
O songs of the River of Blood,”
Let me lie down. Let my words
Lie sound in the mouths of men
Repeating invocations pure
And perfect as a moan
That mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith.
Blues for the angels kicked out
Of heaven. Blues for the angels
Who miss them still. Blues
&n
bsp; For my people and what water
They know. O weary drinkers
Drinking from the bloody river,
Why go to heaven with Harlem
So close? Why sing of rivers
With fathers of our own to miss?
I remember mine and taste a stain
Like blood coursing the body
Of a man chased by a mob. I write
His running, his sweat: here,
He climbs a poplar for the sky,
But it is only sky. The river?
Follow me. You’ll see. We tried
To fly and learned we couldn’t
Swim. Dear singing river full
Of my blood, are we as loud under-
Water? Is it blood that binds
Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi
Running through the fattest vein
Of America? When I say home,
I mean I wanted to write some
Lines. I wanted to hear the blues,
But here I am swimming the river
Again. What runs through the fat
Veins of a drowned body? What
America can a body call
Home? When I say Congo, I mean
Blood. When I say Nile, I mean blood.
When I say Euphrates, I mean,
If only you knew what blood
We have in common. So much,
In Louisiana, they call a man like me
Red. And red was too dark
For my daddy. And my daddy was
Too dark for America. He ran
Like a man from my mother
And me. And my mother’s sobs
Are the songs of Bessie Smith
Who wears more feathers than
Death. O the death my people refuse
To die. When I was 18, I wrote down
The river though I couldn’t win
A race, climbed a tree that winter, then
Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line
After line, I read all the time,
But “there was nothing I could do
About Race.”
’N’em
They said to say goodnight
And not goodbye, unplugged
The TV when it rained. They hid