A review by paperrcuts
The Tradition by Jericho Brown

3.0

Duplex 

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.