Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown Poems

Jericho Brown Biography

Jericho Brown is an American poet. In 2011, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. He graduated from Dillard University, and from the University of New Orleans with an MFA, and from the University of Houston with a Ph.D. He taught at the University of San Diego until 2012, when he became a professor at Emory University.Previously he worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, Oxford American. He serves as an Assistant Editor at Callaloo.)

The Best Poem Of Jericho Brown

The Hammers

They sat on the dresser like anything
I put in my pocket before leaving
The house. I even saw a few tiny ones
Tilted against the window of my living
Room, little metal threats with splinters
For handles. They leaned like those
Teenage boys at the corner who might
Not be teenage boys because they ask
For dollars in the middle
Of the April day and because they knock
At 10 a.m. Do I need help lifting some-
Thing heavy? Yard work? I wondered
If only I saw the hammers. The teenage
Boys visiting seemed not to care that
They lay on the floor lit by the TV.
I'd have covered them up with rugs,
With dry towels and linen, but their claw
And sledge and ball-peen heads shone
In the dark, which is, at least, a view
In the dark. And their handles meant
My hands, striking surfaces, getting
Shelves up, finally. One stayed
In my tub, slowing the drain. I found
Another propped near the bulb
In the refrigerator. Wasn't I hungry?
Why have them there if I could not
Use them, if I could not look at my own
Reflection in the mirror and take one
To the temple and knock myself out?

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