We spoke with poet Jericho Brown, author of Please, about his relationship with the “we”, about sitting on beds in street clothes, and the poems he’d read to all of Shreveport, Louisiana if he could. Brown will read with Khadijah Queen, Rachel Sherman, eteam, and DJ Lady DM at the 2012-2013 First Person Plural Reading Series season finale on April 1 at Shrine.

When do you feel most “we”? When Al Green gets played in a public place.

How comfortable is “we” to you?  I’m either a team player or a man with too big an ego because I actually think “we” whenever I make a decision that is actually “I.” Examples include: “We will not go another week without getting our roots twisted.”/ “We cannot believe they rejected our poem and published this trash instead.”/ “We should do some cardio if we plan to eat what we want.”  Wherever there isn’t a “we,” I find myself trying to make one.

Do you ever resist the “we”?  Not since the first time I met Alice Walker, which was shortly after I read The Third Life of Grange Copeland, one of my favorite novels.  At the time, I thought I was every one of the characters.

Has the “we” ever hurt you?  “We” has, but I think I may not be as sensitive as I once was.  I just think, “Who hasn’t ‘we’ hurt?”

Have you written in a collective voice before?  What was that like?  I am a student of Kay Murphy and a child of Toi Derricotte.  I believe the personal is political, that the private is the most public, and I believe my poems should make that clear.

First knowledge of Harlem.  His name was Dre.  He met me at the subway stop to make sure I didn’t get lost.  He didn’t have much furniture, but he did have crates and crates of records all over the living room of his apartment.  Maybe he was a deejay.  I would have asked about the music, but we got…umm…sidetracked.  He told me I couldn’t sit on the bed in my “street clothes.” I remember being bothered that he had hand towels and no face towels.  In the morning, he asked if I remembered how to get back to the subway.

Which musician, living or dead, should sing at your wedding?  Stephanie Mills.

When you dance with your beloved, who is playing on the turntable?  Chuck Brown, but of course, we’d want him live and not on a turntable.

Who inspires you right now?  Muriel Rukeyser, Jonah D. Mixon-Webster, and Rob Halpern.

What are you working on now?  I’m fighting with Wayne Johns over edits to The New Testament, my second book which will be published by Copper Canyon in 2014.  (Actually, I’m just fighting with him to get back to me about final drafts I send him as fast as I get back to him about drafts he sends me lol.)

I’m showing my students opportunities in their poems to say more with less.

I’m reading Amber Dermont’s book of short stories, Damage Control.

Tell us about the future.  “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?”

What urgent advice would you give emerging writers?  Use condoms.

If you could have all of Shreveport show for a reading, which poem would you read? It’s a toss up between this one:

Found:  Messiah
(Blog Entry from “The Dumb, the Bad, and the Dead”)

A Shreveport man was killed
When he tried to rob two men.

Decided he could make money

Easier stealing it.
Police responding to

Gunshots found Messiah

Demery, 27, shot once in the chest
Trying to rob Rodrigus

And Shamicheal.  Rodrigus got

A gun, but police found
Some marijuana, so he’s going to jail

Too.  This story would have been nicer

With some innocent people involved,
But one less goblin is one

Less goblin is one less.

Or this one:

Track 3: (Back Down) Memory Lane

Dangerous men park carefully,
Slanting severely-sized
Automobiles into the ditches
That line the narrowness
Of 77th. It’s Friday night
In Shreveport. Checks
Have been cashed, bills
Folded and stashed
Into wallets and bra straps.
Card tables, folding chairs,
And every gold tooth in town
Crowd our grandmother’s
Camelback shotgun house
Because gambling’s illegal
In Shreveport and she cuts
Only two dollars a hand
For every joker that slides
Into a queen. We don’t know
Minnie Riperton’s dead
Years now, buried
With one breast to her name.
School-uniformed in a corner,
We learn to listen to music
Over hollers, through
Smoke.  Her soprano comes across
A photograph in giggles,
But ends up crying,
Save me. We think we’d like that
Kind of love, sad and steeped
In trumpets, though a block up
The entire decade shoots
For words to put in the dictionary:
Crackhead, drive-by. Loss
And gain. The bullet
Meant for a man named Money
Removes his baby sister’s chin.
Ask for horns in Shreveport
And sirens are on the way.
We can’t hear either, grandmama
Calling for us to change
The tape, No more slow songs,
Keep us awake, these years
Before surgeons slice her
In vain, and we drive
Away, our car stereos
Playing rhythm and blues.

If you could have all of Harlem show for this reading, which poem would you read, and why?

Langston Blue

“O Blood of the River of songs,

O songs of the River of Blood,”

	Let me lie down. Let my words 
Lie sound in the mouths of men

Repeating invocations pure

	And perfect as a moan 
That mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith.

Blues for the angels kicked out

	Of heaven. Blues for the angels 
Who miss them still. Blues for

For my people and what water

	They know. O weary drinkers 
Drinking from the bloody river,

Why go to heaven with Harlem

	So close? Why sing of rivers 
With fathers of our own to miss?

I remember mine and taste a stain

	Like blood coursing the body 
Of a man chased by a mob. I write

His running, his sweat: here,

	He climbs a poplar for the sky, 
But it is only sky. The river?

Follow me. You’ll see. We tried

	To fly and learned we couldn’t 
Swim. Dear singing river full

Of my blood, are we as loud under

	Water? Is it blood that binds 
Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi

Running through the fattest vein

	Of America? When I say home, 
I mean I wanted to write some

Lines. I wanted to hear the blues,

	But here I am swimming in the river 
Again. What flows through the fat

Veins of a drowned body? What

	America can a body call
Home? When I say Congo, I mean

Blood. When I say Nile, I mean blood.

	When I say Euphrates, I mean, 
If only you knew what blood

We have in common. So much,

	In Louisiana, they call a man like me 

Red. And red was too dark

For my daddy. And my daddy was

	Too dark for America. He ran 
Like a man from my mother

And me. And my mother’s sobs

	Are the songs of Bessie Smith
Who wears more feathers than

Death. O the death my people refuse

	To die. When I was 18, I wrote down 
The river though I couldn’t win

A race, climbed a tree that winter, then

	Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line 
After line, I read all the time,

But “there was nothing I could do

	 About race.”