Duplex

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.