Jericho Brown
Duplex (I begin with love)

I begin with love, hoping to end there.

I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.

 

       I don’t want to leave a messy corpse

       Full of medicines that turn in the sun.

 

Some of my medicines turn in the sun.

Some of us don’t need hell to be good.

 

       Those who need least, need hell to be good.

       What are the symptoms of your sickness?

 

Here is one symptom of my sickness:

Men who love me are men who miss me.

 

       Men who leave me are men who miss me

       In the dream where I am an island.

 

In the dream where I am an island,

I grow green with hope.  I’d like to end there.

 

 

 
Found In Volume 47, No. 06
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Jericho Brown
About the Author

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker. His first book, Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.