Monthly Poem: Jericho Brown

I keep a notebook in which I copy down some of my favorite poems--poems that influence me the most. Every month I post one poem from my notebook.


Heart Condition

I don't want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg. 
Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and
We call it long distance. He holds down one coast. 
I wander the other like any African American, Africa 
With its condition and America with its condition
And black folk born in this nation content to carry 
Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies 
To touch me. Sky on our side. Sky above his world 
I wish to write. Which is where I go wrong. Words 
Are a sense of sound. I get smart. My mother shakes 
Her head. My grandmother sighs: He ain't got no 
Sense. My grandmother is dead. She lives with me. 
I hear my mother shake her head over the phone. 
Somebody cut the cord. We have a long distance 
Relationship. I lost half of her to a stroke. God 
Gives to each a body. God gives every body its pains. 
When pain mounts in my body, I try thinking of my 
White forefathers who hurt their black bastards quite 
Legally. I hate to say it, but one pain can ease another. 
Doctors rather I take pills. My man wants me to see 
A doctor. What are you when you leave your man 
Wanting? What am I now that I think so fondly 
Of airplanes? What's my name, whose is it, while we 
Make love. My lover leaves me with words I wish
To write. Flies from one side of a nation to the outside 
Of our world. I don't want the world. I only want 
African sense of American sound. Him. Touching. 
This body. Aware of its pains. Greetings, Earthlings. 
My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet 
Trouble. I am here to leave you uncomfortable.