Poem of the Week: Jericho Brown
'N'em
They said to say goodnight
And not goodbye, unplugged
The TV when it rained. They hid
Money in mattresses
So to sleep on decisions.
Some of their children
Were not their children. Some
Of their parents had no birthdates.
They could sweat a cold out
Of you. They'd wake without
An alarm telling them to.
Even the short ones reached
Certain shelves. Even the skinny
Cooked animals too quick
To get caught. And I don't care
How ugly one of them arrived,
That one got married
To somebody fine. They fed
Families with change and wiped
Their kitchens clean.
Then another century came.
People like me forgot their names.
-Jericho Brown
Used by permission.
Jericho Brown
was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and once worked as the speechwriter
for the Mayor of New Orleans. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award
and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, Brown is an Assistant
Professor at Emory University. His poems have appeared in journals and
anthologies including The American Poetry Review, jubilat, Oxford American, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Best American Poetry, and 100 Best African American Poems. His first book, PLEASE, won the American Book Award.
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