Jericho Brown

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Jericho Brown grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans and graduated with a BA from Dillard University in 1998. Brown is the author of The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), which received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and Please (New Issues, 2008), which received the 2009 American Book Award. Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award and has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Houston, San Diego State University, and the University of San Diego, as well as at numerous conferences and workshops. Brown is currently an associate professor of English and creative writing and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and poetry editor at The Believer. Source

Labor

I spent what light Saturday sent sweating

And learned to cuss cutting grass for women

Kind enough to say they couldn’t tell the damned

Difference between their mowed lawns

And their vacuumed carpets just before

Handing over a five-dollar bill rolled tighter

Than a joint and asking me in to change

A few lightbulbs. I called those women old

Because they wouldn’t move out of a chair

Without my help or walk without a hand

At the base of their backs. I called them

Old, and they must have been; they’re all dead

Now, dead and in the earth I once tended. 

The loneliest people have the earth to love

And not one friend their own age—only

Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss

Them around, women they want to please

And pray for the chance to say please to.

I don’t do that kind of work anymore. My job

Is to look at the childhood I hated and say

I once had something to do with my hands.

 

Published:

2010

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Childhood & Coming of Age

Death & Loss

Family

Memory & The Past

Nature

Poems of the Everyday

Literary Devices:

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Antanaclasis

The repetition of a word within a phrase, in which the second use of the word utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first.

Hyperbole

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally

Varied syntax

diverse sentence structure