The New Testament

by Jericho Brown

  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

  To believe in God is to love

  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.