The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

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...