Duplex (A poem is a gesture toward home)

By Jericho Brown

A poem is a gesture toward home.
It makes dark demands I call my own.

        Memory makes demands darker than my own:
            My last love drove a burgundy car.

My first love drove a burgundy car.
He was fast and awful, tall as my father.

            Steadfast and awful, my tall father
            Hit hard as a hailstorm. He'd leave marks.

Light rain hits easy but leaves its own mark
Like the sound of a mother weeping again.

            Like the sound of my mother weeping again,
            No sound beating ends where it began.

None of the beaten end up how we began.
A poem is a gesture toward home.

Credits

Jericho Brown, “Duplex” from The Tradition. Copyright © 2019 by Jericho Brown. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. All rights reserved.