Him at a good speed for a long distance,
And to believe, believe that
When he hungers, I am able
To leap high, snatch
The fruit of the tree
We pause to hide behind and feed, feed him.
Cakewalk
My man swears his HIV is better than mine, that his has in it a little
gold, something he can spend if he ever gets old, claims mine is full
of lead: slows you down, he tells me, looking over his shoulder. But
I keep my eyes on his behind, say my HIV is just fine. Practical. Like
pennies. Like copper. It can conduct electricity. Keep the heat on or
shock you. It works hard, earns as much as my smile.
Stand
Peace on this planet
Or guns glowing hot,
We lay there together
As if we were getting
Something done. It
Felt like planting
A garden or planning
A meal for a people
Who still need feeding,
All that touching or
Barely touching, not
Saying much, not adding
Anything. The cushion
Of it, the skin and
Occasional sigh, all
Seemed like work worth
Mastering. I’m sure
Somebody died while
We made love. Some-
Body killed somebody
Black. I thought then
Of holding you
As a political act. I
May as well have
Held myself. We didn’t
Stand for one thought,
Didn’t do a damn thing,
And though you left
Me, I’m glad we didn’t.
Duplex: Cento
My last love drove a burgundy car,
Color of a rash, a symptom of sickness.
We were the symptoms, the road our sickness:
None of our fights ended where they began.
None of the beaten end where they begin.
Any man in love can cause a messy corpse,
But I didn’t want to leave a messy corpse
Obliterated in some lilied field,
Stench obliterating lilies of the field,
The murderer, young and unreasonable.
He was so young, so unreasonable,
Steadfast and awful, tall as my father.
Steadfast and awful, my tall father
Was my first love. He drove a burgundy car.
NOTES
The italicized portion of “After Avery R. Young” is a 2010 quotation from Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam (which has its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois).
The italicized lines in “Dear Whiteness” are from “Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac from the album Tango in the Night (Warner Bros. Records, 1987).
“Duplex (I begin with…)” is for L. Lamar Wilson.
“The Hammers” is modeled after “What the Angels Left” by Marie Howe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Award and of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Fence, jubilat, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time, and several of The Best American Poetry anthologies. His first book, Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He serves as poetry editor for The Believer. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.
ALSO BY JERICHO BROWN
The New Testament
Please
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of these poems appeared in the following journals and anthologies: The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Bennington Review, The Best American Poetry 2017, BOMB Magazine, Boston Review, BuzzFeed, The Georgia Review, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, Gulf Coast, Memorious, The Nation, The New Criterion, The New Yorker, Opossum, Oxford American, The Paris Review, PEN Poetry Series, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Poetry, Poetry London, Poetry Society of America online, The Rumpus, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Time, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Vinyl, and Weber: The Contemporary West.
This book was written with the support of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Emory University, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Copyright 2019 by Jericho Brown
All rights reserved
Cover art: L. Ralphi Burgess, You’re in the Middle of the World, ca. 2017, acrylic and mixed media, 18” × 25”
ISBN: 978-1-55659-586-1
eISBN: 978-1-61932-195-3
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Poetry is vital to language and living. Since 1972, Copper Canyon Press has published extraordinary poetry from around the world to engage the imaginations and intellects of readers, writers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, students, and donors. Lannan Literary Selections
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LANNAN LITERARY SELECTIONS 2019
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