To Be Seen

Jericho Brown

Work (plain text):

To Be Seen
Jericho Brown
Poem

You will forgive me if I carry the tone of a preacher.
Surely, you understand, a man in the midst of dying

Must have a point, which is not to say that I am dying
Exactly. My doctor tells me I might live

Longer than most, since I see him more than most.
Of course, he cannot be trusted nor can any man

Who promises you life based on his being seen.
Understand also, then, that a point and a message are

Indeed quite different. All messages issue forth from
The chosen: a prophet, an angel, the whitest

Dove —those who hear the voice of God and other
Good music. A point, on the other hand, is made

By one who chooses but claims to have been chosen
So as not to be punished for bringing bad news:

The preacher, the poet, my doctor — those who talk
About God because they want to speak in metaphors.

Mydoctor, for instance, insists on the metaphor of war;
It’s always the virus that attacks and the cells that fight or

Die fighting. I even remember him saying the word siege
When another rash returned. Here I am dying

While he makes a battle of my body — anything to be seen
When all he really means is to grab me by the chin

And, like God the Father, say through clenched teeth,
Look at me when I’m talking to you. Your healing is

Not in my hands, though I touch as if to make you whole.

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Biography:

Jericho Brown worked as speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans and a B.A. from Dillard University. The recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown has served as an Assistant Editor at Callaloo. He is author of The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s 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. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.

Sample prompts & exercises:

Witness prompts:

Your healing is…
The battle of my body…

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Witness

Bearing witness to and unpacking healthcare experiences and lived experiences. Deepening the process of listening, presence, responding, and assimilating.

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