The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

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.

The Microscopes Heavy and expensive, hard and black With bits of chrome, they looked Like baby cannons, the real children of war, and 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 Then blown back up again, every atomic thing About a piece of my coiled hair on one slide Just as unimportant as anyone else’s Growing in that science Class where I learned what little difference God saw if God saw me. It was the start of one fear, A puny one not much worth mentioning, Narrow as the pencil tucked behind my ear, lost When I reached for it To stab someone I secretly loved: a bigger boy Who’d advance Through those tight, locker-lined corridors shoving Without saying Excuse me, more an insult than a battle. No large loss. Not at all. Nothing necessary to study Or recall. No fighting in the hall On the way to an American history exam I almost passed. Redcoats. Red blood cells. Red-bricked Education I rode the bus to get. I can’t remember The exact date or Grade, but I know when I began ignoring slight alarms That move others to charge or retreat. I’m a kind Of camouflage. I never let on when scared Of conflicts so old they seem to amount To nothing really—dust particles left behind— Like the viral geography of an occupied territory, A region I imagine you imagine when you see A white...

The Tradition Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning Names in heat, in elements classical Philosophers said could change us. Stargazer. 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. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath. Men like me and my brothers filmed what we Planted for proof we existed before Too late, sped the video to see blossoms Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems Where the world ends, everything cut down. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

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.

Bullet Points

I promise if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me. He took Me from us and left my body, which is, No matter what we’ve been taught, Greater than the settlement A city can pay a mother to stop crying, And more beautiful than the new bullet Fished from the folds of my brain.

Oh and no, We’re not interested in killing White people or making them Work. Matter of truth, some snorted Cocaine until folk started calling it White lady.

Slavery is a bad idea. The more you look like me, the more we Agree.

The blk mind Is a continuous mind. I am not a narrative Form, but dammit if I don’t tell a story.

All land owned is land once stolen. So the blues people of the world walk On water. We will not die. Blk music. Blk rage. Blk city of the soul In a very cold town. Blk ice is ice you can’t see.

We see A sea so cross it. We see a moon So land there. We love land so Long as we can take it.

Midnight is many colors.

Men die, But God’s soul rises out of its black Noose, finds Bared skin a landscape prepared For use— Immortality requires worship.

In the dream where I am an island, I grow green with hope. I’d like to end there.

I love a man I know could die And not by way of illness And not by his own hand But because of the color of that hand and all His flawless skin.

I am so many odd And enviable things.

The Virus Dubbed undetectable, I can’t kill The people you touch, and I can’t Blur your view Of the pansies you’ve planted Outside the window, meaning 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. If I can’t leave you Dead, I’ll have You vexed. Look. Look Again: show me the color Of your flowers now.

What I love Understands itself As properly scarce. It knows I can’t need What I don’t go without.

Crossing

Soooo gooood

I’m sure Somebody died while We made love. Some- Body killed somebody Black. I thought then Of holding you As a political act.