In two places, I carried a child’s Bible
Like a football under the arm that didn’t
Ache. I was never alone. I owned
My brother’s shame of me. I loved
The words thou and thee. Both meant
My tongue in front of my teeth.
Both meant a someone speaking to me.
So what if I itched. So what if I couldn’t
Breathe. I climbed the cyclone fence
Like children on my street and went
First when old men asked for a boy
To pray or to read. Some had it worse—
Nobody whipped me with a water hose
Or a phone cord or a leash. Old men
Said I’d grow into my face, and I did.
Hustle
They lie like stones and dare not shift. Even asleep, everyone hears in prison.
Dwayne Betts deserves more than this dry ink for his teenage years in prison.
In the film we keep watching, Nina takes Darius to a steppers ball.
Lovers hustle, slide, and dip as if none of them has a brother in prison.
I eat with humans who think any book full of black characters is about race.
A book full of white characters examines insanity—but never in prison.
His whole family made a barricade of their bodies at the door to room 403.
He died without the man he wanted. What use is love at home or in prison?
We saw police pull sharks out of the water just to watch them not breathe.
A brother meets members of his family as he passes the mirrors in prison.
Sundays, I washed and dried her clothes after he threw them into the yard.
In the novel I love, Brownfield kills his wife, gets only seven years in prison.
I don’t want to point my own sinful finger, so let’s use your clean one instead.
Some bright citizen reading this never considered a son’s short hair in prison.
In our house lived three men with one name, and all three fought or ran.
I left Nelson Demery III for Jericho Brown, a name I earned in prison.
III
Another Elegy
This is what our dying looks like.
You believe in the sun. I believe
I can’t love you. Always be closing,
Said our favorite professor before
He let the gun go off in his mouth.
I turned 29 the way any man turns
In his sleep, unaware of the earth
Moving beneath him, its plates in
Their places, a dated disagreement.
Let’s fight it out, baby. You have
Only so long left—a man turning
In his sleep—so I take a picture.
I won’t look at it, of course. It’s
His bad side, his Mr. Hyde, the hole
In a husband’s head, the O
Of his wife’s mouth. Every night,
I take a pill. Miss one, and I’m gone.
Miss two, and we’re through. Hotels
Bore me, unless I get a mountain view,
A room in which my cell won’t work,
And there’s nothing to do but see
The sun go down into the ground
That cradles us as any coffin can.
Obituary
Say I never was a waiter. Say I never worked
Retail. Tell the papers and the police, I wrote
One color and wore a torn shirt. Nothing
Makes for longevity like a lie, so I had a few
Fakes and stains, but quote me, my hunger
Was sudden and wanting. I waited, marked
Time with what heart-
Beats I could hear, bumped my head nodding
At home. Some boys walked to my bedroom
In boots. Some of me woke wheezing the next
Morning wherever snow didn’t fall by the foot
In a day. Beyond that, a name. For proof, a finger
Pointing forward. When you measure the distance
Between this grave and what I gave, you’ll find me
Here, at the end of my body and in love
With Derrick Franklin, gift of carnelian,
Lashes thick as a thumb. Some men have a mind
For marriage. Some never
Leave home. If the body is a corporation,
I was the guy in charge of blood, my man
The CEO of bone. He kept a scandal
In my pocket. I sucked in my gut because I wanted
The lights on. Should a fool come looking
For money, say I was a bag boy and a nanny.
Beyond that, a nation looking backward. A smile
That would shine like the last line of cocaine.
Psalm 150
Some folks fool themselves into believing,
But I know what I know once, at the height
Of hopeless touching, my man and I hold
Our breaths, certain we can stop time or maybe
Eliminate it from our lives, which are shorter
Since we learned to make love for each other
Rather than doing it to each other. As for praise
And worship, I prefer the latter. Only memory
Makes us kneel, silent and still. Hear me?
Thunder scares. Lightning lets us see. Then,
Heads covered, we wait for rain. Dear Lord,
Let me watch for his arrival and hang my head
And shake it like a man who’s lost and lived.
Something keeps trying, but I’m not killed yet.
A Living
A scribble, a pat on the back—and no more
Itches. I should have been a doctor. Better,
A preacher, a man who calls men to lift
Hands in surrender disguised as praise.
Everyone loves Jesus. He saves. He’s
A healer. I lose when my man is right:
I cannot pay an electric bill, mine or his,
One of us sick, the other sicker, neither
Knowing how to sew or salve a wound, only
How precise the sound of him punctured.
After the Rapture
veritas sequitur esse
Nobody drowned in the flood.
In the beginning, the sky could not fail.
The first raindrops took men
By surprise. Everyone died
Of shock. But when man was born
Again, he liked words enough
To see if wilted might indeed modify
Trees, so he drove toward an edge,
Ran out of gas, turned back
To look at the desert, and like a nation
Testing its best weapons
In locations empty, unmarked,
Vast, he shredded himself
With glass, spilled into and over
Unnameable stretches of land,
Concrete, water, hands. Then,
The real killing began. The cacti
Leaked and lost their needles. A few
Men prayed. And we prayed to win.
Hebrews 13
Once, long ago, in a land I cannot name,
My lover and my brother both knocked
At my door like wind in an early winter.
I turned the heat high and poured coffee
Blacker than their hands which shivered
As we sat in silence so thin I had to hum.
They drank with a speed that must have
Burned their tongues one hot cup then
Another like two bitter friends who only
Wished to be warm again like two worn
Copies of a holy book bound by words to keep
Watch over my life in the cold and never ever sleep
Angel
I’m nine kinds of beautiful,
And all my hair is mine.
The finest girl in Cedar Grove,
All my hair mine.
My mama jumped in a river,
So I
don’t mind dying.
Yes, she read the Bible,
Read all about war in heaven.
Mama named me Angel
To spite that war in heaven.
Ask how many fights I won
Before I turned seven.
When you got hips like these,
Men want to take advantage.
He called my hips a pair of shelves.
The fool tried to take advantage.
Police don’t ever show until
A bullet does some damage.
A few rules are schoolhouse.
Others you learn in church.
I got one rule for my babies
When a kid steals their lunch:
If anybody hits you, hit him
Back. Never wait to punch.
Mama drowned, but before that,
She taught me how to punch.
She lost a love then killed herself,
But she taught me to punch.
I hear my man laughing above.
I hit back hard, now he won’t hush.
Receiving Line
California, November 4, 2008
Whenever a man wins, other men form lines
To wring his right hand like a towel wet
With what we want after washing. None
Of us clean, we leave soot older than color
Caked in his palm, so the winner we waited for
Can’t see his own life line. This is mine,
Suited, on time: My name is Jericho Brown.
I like a little blues and a lot of whiskey. I read
When my children let me. I write what I can’t
Resist. I’m as proud of you as a well-built chest, and
I am in unlegislated love with a man bound
To grab for me when he sleeps. Take my right hand,
The one that wakes him, the one I use to swear—
Make-Believe
Somewhere between here and Louisiana, I changed
Clothes, each quarter I counted and counted on gone.
Women carry cartons and kegs, bananas and eggs.
I only need sugar, some smokes, a can of Coke
To get through the margins where I write,
Metaphor = tenor + vehicle, for children who beg
To touch my hair and ask if I play basketball.
Tomorrow, I will explain the word brother
Is how we once knew black as someone
Frowns, raising his freckled hand: So, you don’t
Have a brother? Milk warms behind me. Babies
Begin to cry. I dig again, this time coming back
With lint. I am not a liar, I tell the cashier. The next
Day to my students I’ll say, No, I don’t have a brother
In the world. Myth is not make-believe. My
Mother and father had only one son. This,
My brother, is a metaphor. I am the tenor.
Brother is how you get to me if you are black
And you leave Louisiana and you lose what little
Tender you thought you had to spend, broke
With a line to remember, people who need to eat.
Found: Messiah
blog entry at The Dumb, the Bad, and the Dead
A Shreveport man was killed
When he tried to rob two men.
Decided he could make money
Easier stealing it.
Police responding to
Gunshots found Messiah
Demery, 27, shot once in the chest
Trying to rob Rodrigus
And Shamicheal. Rodrigus got
A gun, but police found
Some marijuana, so he’s going to jail
Too. This story would have been nicer
With some innocent people involved,
But one less goblin is one
Less goblin is one less.
Another Angel
I found myself bound to Him and bound to His
Bidding. He left water without color and land
With no motion to mention but kept me going
Like a toy wound tighter than His one odd eye
When I failed to deliver a message on time.
He built bugs and beasts; I understood my
Sexlessness. He invented men and women;
I knew I had no father. He never told me
What I was, what He could be. So what—
Two boys in Oil City, Louisiana, complain
About their bodies, featherless, modeled after
The reflection He passes in streams. They got
Sick playing barefoot in mud, and they hate
Their symptoms. I am that kind of pain
Put to purpose but unloved, bound to the Lord—
He looks at those brothers, never noticing his own—
Bound like their strange sister told to bathe them
Once, filthy and feverish, they finally come home.
Eden
One winter, we decided to plunge, to swim or drown,
Bare-dicked and beautiful. Then we slept as if the town
Were warm, though before either of us got born, heroes
Thought to end all threats by building one final weapon.
We said what any man should when waking cold, his lover
Pressed against him close—Promise, and, I could die this way.
*
Let’s celebrate, O ye gentlemen of Thunder Bay.
Show me a brick. A bottle. Knuckles and feet.
Put on a pair of Nikes made for catching prey.
Don’t just scare me. Find your keys and beat
The limp out my wrists. I worked all Friday,
And this is North America, for God’s sake, treat
Me like it, like I looked at you that able way
You look at women to prove yourselves straight.
Another Elegy
What none can see. Let a lover go,
Let him walk out with the good
Spoons or die
Without a signature, and so much
Remains for scrubbing, for a polish
Cleaner than devotion. Tonight,
God is one spot, and you,
You must be one blind nun. You
Wipe, you rub, but love won’t move.
At the End of Hell
So what if I love him,
The one they call bad,
The one they call black,
The one with the gap
In his teeth only I get
To see. What if I risk
Taking the head of death
Here in the dark, far
And deep, where
Burrowing beasts build
House after filthy house,
And nobody witnesses
My underworld gangster
Play kidnap, play Mama’s
Baby turned queen, and
If I scream, Pastel—he
Swears he’s sorry, unties
My feet. What if that’s
Worth a few bruises
Better than the light
Called spring, and I love
It, every drop of God
Weeping over me.
Heart Condition
I don’t want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg.
Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and
We call it long distance. He holds down one coast.
I wander the other like any African American, Africa
With its condition and America with its condition
And black folk born in this nation content to carry
Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies
To touch me. Sky on our side. Sky above his world
I wish to write. Which is where I go wrong. Words
Are a sense of sound. I get smart. My mother shakes
Her head. My grandmother sighs: He ain’t got no
Sense. My grandmother is dead. She lives with me.
I hear my
mother shake her head over the phone.
Somebody cut the cord. We have a long-distance
Relationship. I lost half of her to a stroke. God gives
To each a body. God gives every body its pains.
When pain mounts in my body, I try thinking
Of my white forefathers who hurt their black bastards
Quite legally. I hate to say it, but one pain can ease
Another. Doctors rather I take pills. My man wants me
To see a doctor. What are you when you leave your man
Wanting? What am I now that I think so fondly
Of airplanes? What’s my name, whose is it, while we
Make love. My lover leaves me with words I wish
To write. Flies from one side of a nation to the outside
Of our world. I don’t want the world. I only want
African sense of American sound. Him. Touching.
This body. Aware of its pains. Greetings, Earthlings.
My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet
Trouble. I am here to love you uncomfortable.
Nativity
I was Mary once.
Somebody big as a beginning
Gave me trouble
I was too young to carry, so I ran
Off with a man who claimed
Not to care. Each year,
Come trouble’s birthday,
I think of every gift people get
They don’t use. Oh, and I
Pray. Lord, let even me
And what the saints say is sin within
My blood, which certainly shall see
Death—see to it I mean—
Let that sting
Last and be transfigured.
Apocrypha
The beginning and ending of “Langston’s Blues” are from the conclusion of Terrance Hayes’s poem “A Small Novel.”
“Always be closing”—in “Another Elegy” (This is what our dying…)—was a favorite piece of advice Liam Rector gave to his poetry students. The line was made popular by a monologue in the film version of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross.
Cedar Grove, in the poem titled “Angel,” is a neighborhood in Shreveport, Louisiana, bordered by Hollywood Avenue, 85th Street, Line Avenue (mentioned in “Motherland”), and Mansfield Road.
“Receiving Line” is set in California, November 4, 2008, when citizens directed the state’s 55 electoral votes to Barack Obama, who became the first African American U.S. President. They also voted that day to pass Proposition 8, which eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.