Jericho Brown

Heart Condition

I don’t want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg.

Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and

We call it long distance. He holds down one coast.

I wander the other like any African American, Africa

With its condition and America with its condition

And black folk born in this nation content to carry

Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies

To touch me. Sky on our side. Sky above his world

I wish to write. Which is where I go wrong. Words

Are a sense of sound. I get smart. My mother shakes

Her head. My grandmother sighs: He ain’t got no

Sense. My grandmother is dead. She lives with me.

I hear my mother shake her head over the phone.

Somebody cut the cord. We have a long distance

Relationship. I lost half of her to a stroke. God gives

To each a body. God gives every body its pains.

When pain mounts in my body, I try thinking

Of my white forefathers who hurt their black bastards

Quite legally. I hate to say it, but one pain can ease

Another. Doctors rather I take pills. My man wants me

To see a doctor. What are you when you leave your man

Wanting? What am I now that I think so fondly

Of airplanes? What’s my name, whose is it, while we

Make love. My lover leaves me with words I wish

To write. Flies from one side of a nation to the outside

Of our world. I don’t want the world. I only want

African sense of American sound. Him. Touching.

This body. Aware of its pains. Greetings, Earthlings.

My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet

Trouble. I am here to love you uncomfortab