The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

The people of my country believe We can’t be hurt if we can be bought.

There is the happiness you have And the happiness you deserve.

No matter how sore the injury Has left you, you sit understanding Yourself as a human being finally Free now that nobody’s got to love you.

I Hated them for that, for what our teacher said They could do, and then I hated them For what they did when we gave up Stealing looks at one another’s bodies To press a left or right eye into the barrel and see Our actual selves taken down to a cell

Growing in that science Class where I learned what little difference God saw if God saw me.

Seeing insignificance of the self—from god, from your community, laid before you

Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter On this planet than when our dead fathers Wiped sweat from their necks.

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we Planted for proof we existed before

I am most interested in people who declare gratitude For their childhood beatings.

Gratitude is black— Black as a hero returning from war to a country that banked on his death. Thank God. It can’t get much darker than that.

I love black women Who plant flowers as sheepish as their sons. By the time the blooms Unfurl themselves for a few hours of light, the women who tend them Are already at work.

I’ll never know who started the lie that we are lazy, But I’d love to wake that bastard up At foreday in the morning, toss him in a truck, and drive him under God Past every bus stop in America to see all those black folk Waiting to go work for whatever they want. A house? A boy To keep the lawn cut? Some color in the yard? My God, we leave things green.

How can it be lazy to have built an entire nation? To uphold it on your back with no credit? How does Atlas feel, forgotten?

Didn’t that bare square ask to be played On, beaten on the head, then folded, then put away, All so we could call ourselves safe Now that there was more room, a little more space?

The rhetoric against those who commit crimes, against those who have dared to take up space

But I promise you, I trust the maggots Who live beneath the floorboards Of my house to do what they must To any carcass more than I trust An officer of the law of the land

I promise if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me.

None of the beaten end up how we began. A poem is a gesture toward home.

Useless now that I know everyone moves the same Whether moving in tears or moving To punch my face.

Everyone is part of the system of oppression, no matter how their individual reactions might be

It’s not that I love them Every day. It’s that I love them anyway.

How Do you say God Now that the night Rises sooner?

class Means school, this room Where we practice Words that undo your Tongue when you tell A lie or start a promise Or unravel like a story.

The idea that a “safe space” is used to teach us cruelty and detach us from our stories

I am not a narrative Form, but dammit if I don’t tell a story.

He is individual, he is a we, but not only a we

All land owned is land once stolen.

The opposite of rape is understanding

A body: understanding as listening . A culture: understanding as learning

I want to obliterate the flowered field, To obliterate my need for the field And raise a building above the grasses, A building of prayer against the grasses, My body a temple in disrepair.

We have Never heard a mother wailing. We do not know the history Of this nation in ourselves.

We Do not know the history of our- Selves on this planet because We do not have to know what We believe we own.

We love land so Long as we can take it.

We sell what cannot be Bought. We buy silence.

Sell them these things and they’ll never think to wonder if what they need didn’t already belong to them

No such thing as good white people.

The young are hard for you To kill. May be harder still to hear a kid cry Without looking for a sweet To slip into his mouth. Won’t you hold him? Won’t you coo toward the years before my story Is all the fault of our imaginations?

Suppression of history

We can make me Better if you like: write back. Or take the trip. I’ve dressed my wounds with tar And straightened a place for you On the cold side of this twin bed.

A child is malleable—a child can be controlled

Candles are Romantic because We understand shadows.

Patroclus died because He could not see What he really was inside His lover’s armor.

the worth of a house, a car, A woman—all the same to men Who claimed them: things To be entered, each to suffer Wear and tear with time,

all Of us crying mine, like babies who Grab for what must be beautiful Since someone else saw it.

I’d oblige because he hurt me With a violence I mistook for desire.

And I sing, again, those songs because I know The value of sweet music when we need to pass The time without wondering what rots beneath our feet.

I can’t help you. I can’t hug you. I can’t grip your right hand, though It never held a gun, though it never Covered a lovely mouth,

Just because you didn’t do those things doesn’t mean you didn’t come from them. Your life, your privilege, there is a root

See how this mouth opens To speak what language you allow me With the threat of my head cradled safe.

I don’t have kids Cuz I’d have to send them to school Ain’t that safe as any Plan for parenthood Mass shooting blues When you see me coming You see me running If you can beat a bullet You oughta run too

Someone feels lost in the forest Of we, so he can’t imagine A single tree. He can’t bear it.

How Old will I get to be in a nation That believes we can grow out Of a grave?

People say bad things about Me, though they don’t know My name. I have a name.

Someone planted An idea of me.

In Dallas a hub Through which we get To smaller places That lurch And hurt going Home means stopping In Dallas

He thought it necessary To leave me with knowledge I can be Hated

I begin with love, hoping to end there.

Some of us don’t need hell to be good. Those who need most, need hell to be good.

I am so many odd And enviable things. Righteous is not One of them.

I can’t kill the pansies, but I want to. I want them dying, and I want To do the killing. I want you To heed that I’m still here Just beneath your skin and in Each organ The way anger dwells in a man Who studies the history of his nation.

I am tired Of claiming beauty where There is only truth: