Jericho Brown > Quotes

“I've always said that you know you're a poet when you type an em dash and you hit the delete button, and you type a colon and you hit the delete button, and you type an em dash and you hit the delete button, and you type a colon and you hit the delete button. If you can do that for about three hours straight, trying to figure out which one is the best one, if you can do that for three hours and call that a good time, then you're probably a poet.”
― Jericho Brown

“I’m sure Somebody died while We made love. Some- Body killed somebody Black. I thought then Of holding you As a political act.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“Nobody in this nation feels safe, and I'm still a reason why.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“A poem is a gesture toward home.”
― Jericho Brown

“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.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“There is the happiness you have
And the happiness you deserve.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“The people of my country believe We can’t be hurt if we can be bought.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“We’d like a list of what we lost
Think of those who landed in the Atlantic
The sharkiest of waters
Bonnetheads and thrashers
Spinners and blacktips
We are made of so much water
Bodies of water
Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom
The mud they must call nighttime
Oh there was some survival
Life
After life on the Atlantic—this present grief
So old we see through it
So thick we can touch it
And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it
I don’t have the reach
I’m not qualified
I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe
I can’t kill a man
Or write it down
A list of what we lost
The history of the wound
The history of the wound
That somebody bought them
That somebody brought them
To the shore of Virginia and then
Inland
Into the land of cliché
I’d rather know their faces
Their names
My love yes you
Whether you pray or not
If I knew your name
I’d ask you to help me
Imagine even a single tooth
I’d ask you to write that down
But there’s not enough ink

I’d like to write a list of what we lost.

Think of those who landed in the Atlantic,

Think of life after life on the Atlantic—
Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it.

And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it.
But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified.

And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified?
Don’t you know the history of the wound?

Here is the history of the wound:
Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them.

Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them,
I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.”
― Jericho Brown, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“My mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway toward her porch
Because she was a woman with land who showed as much by giving it color.
She told me I could have whatever I worked for. That means she was an American.
But she’d say it was because she believed
In God. I am ashamed of America
And confounded by God.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“Greetings, Earthlings.
My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet
Trouble. I am here to love you uncomfortable.”
― Jericho Brown

“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.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“Hurt by me, they will not call me
Brother. Hear me coming,
And they cross their legs. As men
Are wont to hate women,
As women are taught to hate
Themselves, they hate a woman
They smell in me, every muscle
Of her body clenched”
― Jericho Brown, The New Testament

“No sound beating ends where it began. None of the beaten end up how we began.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“I don't remember how I hurt myself,
The pain mine
Long enough for me
To lose the wound that invented it”
― Jericho Brown, The New Testament

“I begin with love, hoping to end there.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“So the Bible says, in the beginning, Blackness. I am alive. You? Alive. You born with the nerve To arrive yawning.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“All my anxiety is separation anxiety.
I want to believe you are here with me,
But the bed is bigger and the trash
Overflows. Someone righteous should
Take out my garbage. I am so many odd
And enviable things. Righteous is not
One of them. I’d rather a man to avoid
Than a man to imagine in a realm
Unseen, though even the doctor who
Shut your eyes swears you’re somewhere
As close as breath. Mine, not yours.
You don’t have breath. You got
Heaven. That’s supposed to be my
Haven. I want you to tell me it sparkles
There. I want you to tell me anything
Again and again while I turn you over
To quiet you or to wake and remind you
I can’t be expected to clean up after a man.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“I promise if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“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....”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“What’s yours at home is a wolf in my city. You can’t accuse me of sleeping with a man.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“We few left who listen to the radio leave
Ourselves available to surprise.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“One of the ways we know we’re magical people is by how much we manage to do with broken hearts.”
― Jericho Brown

“Hope is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it.”
― Jericho Brown

“I think of myself as a descendant of traditions that would not have wanted me. Right? So, as long as I'm a queer writer, I'm Whitman's descendant. And he can't do nothing about it.”
― Jericho Brown

“Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them.”
― Jericho Brown, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“All my anxiety is separation anxiety.
I want to believe you are here with me,
But the bed is bigger and the trash
Overflows.
Someone righteous should
Take out my garbage.
I am so many odd”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“I don’t know whose side you’re on,

But I am here for the people

Who work in grocery stores that glow in the morning

And close down for deep cleaning at night”
― Jericho Brown

“I want so little: another leather bound

Book, a gimlet with a lavender gin, bread

So good when I taste it I can tell you

How it’s made. I’d like us to rethink

What it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about America

Today.”
― Jericho Brown

“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.”
― Jericho Brown, The Tradition

“I’d like us to rethink

What it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about America

Today.”
― Jericho Brown