The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

As a Human Being There is the happiness you have And the happiness you deserve. They sit apart from each other The way you and your mother Sat on opposite ends of the sofa After an ambulance came to take Your father away. Some good Doctor will stitch him up, and Soon an aunt will arrive to drive Your mother to the hospital Where she will settle next to him Forever, as promised. She holds The arm of her seat as if she could Fall, as if it is the only sturdy thing, And it is, since you’ve done what You always wanted, you fought Your father and won, marred him. He’ll have a scar he can see all Because of you. And your mother, The only woman you ever cried for, Must tend to it as a bride tends To her vows, forsaking all others No matter how sore the injury. 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.

After Another Country Some dark of us dark, The ones like me, walk Around looking for A building or a bridge. We mumble and pull At our lips, convinced, Until we see how far Down the distance. We arrive to leave, Calling ourselves Cowards, but not you, Rufus. You make it To the George Washington— Bold as an officer of the law With the right to direct traffic When all the stoplights Are out—and you leap Dirty against the whiteness Of the sky to your escape Through the whiteness Of the water.

Bullet Points I will not shoot myself In the head, and I will not shoot myself In the back, and I will not hang myself With a trashbag, and if I do, I promise you, I will not do it In a police car while handcuffed Or in the jail cell of a town I only know the name of Because I have to drive through it To get home. Yes, I may be at risk, 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 To shut my eyes like a man Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet So clean my mother could have used it To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will Do it the same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smoke Or a piece of meat on which I choke Or so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keep Calling worst. 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.

Riddle We do not recognize the body Of Emmett Till. We do not know The boy’s name nor the sound Of his mother wailing. 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 believe We own your bodies but have no Use for your tears. We destroy The body that refuses use. We use Maps we did not draw. We see A sea so cross it. We see a moon So land there. We love land so Long as we can take it. Shhh. We Can’t take that sound. What is A mother wailing? We do not Recognize music until we can Sell it. We sell what cannot be Bought. We buy silence. Let us Help you. How much does it cost To hold your breath underwater? Wait. Wait. What are we? What? What on Earth are we? What?

Token Burg, boro, ville, and wood, I hate those tiny towns, Their obligations. If I needed Anyone to look at me, I’d dye my hair purple And live in Bemidji. Look at me. I want to dye My hair purple and never notice You notice. I want the scandal In my bedroom but not in the mouths of convenience Store customers off the nearest highway. Let me be Another invisible, Used and forgotten and left To whatever narrow miseries I make for myself Without anybody asking What’s wrong. Concern for my soul offends me, so I live in the city, the very shape of it Winding like the mazes of the adult-video outlets I roamed in my twenties: pay a token to walk through Tunnels of men, quick and colorless there where we Each knew what we were, There where I wasn’t the only one.

I Know What I Love It comes from the earth. It is green with deceit. Sometimes what I love Shows up at three In the morning and Rushes in to turn me Upside down. Some- Times what I love just Doesn’t show up at all. It can hurt me if it Means to… because That’s what in love Means. What I love Understands itself As properly scarce. It knows I can’t need What I don’t go without. Some nights I hold My breath. I turn as in Go bad. When I die A man or a woman will Clean up the mess A body makes. They’ll Talk about gas prices And the current drought As they prepare the blue- Black cadaver that still, As the dead do, groans: I wanted what anyone With an ear wants— To be touched and Touched by a presence That has no hands.

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.